Pyrocatalytic disinfection of water using lead-free ferroelectric ceramics

The paper examines the potential of using pyroelectric materials for water disinfection by a process of pyrocatalysis, where the production of charge as a result of a temperature fluctuation is used for water treatment. Both ferroelectric-based pyroelectric materials and non-ferroelectric pyroelectrics were subjected to temperature oscillations in the presence of bacteria solutions, where the effectiveness of the pyroelectric for decontamination was measured by counting and comparing the colony forming units (CFU) grown before and after thermal cycling. The range of pyroelectric materials examined enables the potential impact of material properties on performance; for example the importance of either the piezoelectric charge or voltage. Our preliminary decontamination of water results are promising, where a potassium sodium niobate (KNN) showed reduction in viable bacterial cell counts (in CFU/ml), which is above the accepted 1-2 logarithmic reduction using conventional water treatment processes. This work provides new insights on materials selection of pyroelectric water treatment.