Sunday, November 25, 2012

Technology and Cleaning Processes

By Jessie Mccafferty


In 2006, "Popular Science" magazine offered an article that claimed we wouldn't have to clean our homes anymore by 2011. That was hopeful, and unfortunately it was not accurate. We still have to clean our houses often. But the text brought up some good points and was at least forward-thinking in-part. With many nanotechnology-based products for sale today, we are able to spend a lot less time cleaning our houses, our attire and our automobiles.

Much of this technology is founded on titanium dioxide. When exposed to the ultraviolet rays of daylight, it reacts in a fashion that breaks down bacteria molecularly and fundamentally zaps it away. It utilizes the light in an analogous way that plants use it in photosynthesis. While green, growing things use sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, titanium dioxide uses daylight to turn bacteria into hydrogen, carbon-dioxide and other elements that are melted away into the air instead of remaining on the surface.

As well as its property of breaking down dirt using sunlight, titanium dioxide also reacts with water. Water beads on its surface, rolling off and collecting any dirt and dust with it as it goes. This is also known as the lotus-effect, named after the leaves of the lotus plant. The beading on the surface of the leaf causes the water to roll off, fundamentally washing the path they follow as they are going.

The gigantic advantages of titanium dioxide used as a coating and built into surfaces is that dust won't build up routinely thanks to the photosynthesis-like action, and when it does, it will be washed away because of the water-beading properties found in several common products like car polish. Some landmark buildings around the globe have been sprayed with this kind of nanotechnology so as to keep their facades cleaner and to reduce the results of aging.

The employment of this inside poses a problem right now, because of the need for sunlight. But research is generally moving the process forward.




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