Purification of drinking water in developing countries will be realized by the combination of sunlight and photocatalysts

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)
Environmental Management Research Institute
Chief Senior Researcher

Ph.D. NEGISHI Nobuaki

The environment surrounding drinking water in developing countries is still poor, especially in rural areas. For this reason, SDGs targeting access to safe water have been established. The main cause of this is the lack of infrastructure facilities. By changing the point of view, considering that many developing countries are located in low-latitude regions, therefore, photocatalysts that can purify drinking water using sunlight have great potential. However, photocatalyst technology has many problems to be applied, such as the absence of photocatalytic materials specialized for water treatment, lack of information on the actual situation of water use in local areas, and water composition that varies from region to region, etc. Therefore, by solving these problems of photocatalytic water purification one by one, access to safe water will be realized, and it is expected that photocatalysts will eventually contribute to solving water problems themselves in developing countries.