Private Sector Strikes Again

Here's something that should be of interest to every hospital in the country.

HN: Czech firm invents photoactive air cleaner
Advanced Materials, a small Czech company seated near Prague specialising in nanotechnology, has invented special paints that can clean air from emissions and kill viruses and bacteria, the daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes Tuesday.

These photocatalytic suspensions can remove 95 percent of pollutants from the air in 24 hours, including exhaust gases, allergens, flu viruses and substances causing bad smell.

"It looks like a transparent paint. The layer has no colour and from a distance people cannot see that it is on your wall. However, it very effectively cleans the air in your flat," the company's head Pavel Sefl says.

"If a room is full of cigarette smoke and you leave and return in two hours, you won't smell any smoke at all," Sefl adds.

The air cleaner is only functioning when the sun is shining or when the artificial lights are on.

The paintlike layer is 20 times thinner than a human hair. It costs 1500 crowns [$83.74] per 10 square meters [107.6 sq ft.]. The company says it can be used indefinitely and is good especially for hospitals, schools, offices, shopping malls and all air conditioned buildings.

From the chemical point of view, the basis of the protective coating is photoactive titanium dioxide.

Advanced Materials, which has only five employees, has its invention protected by a patent and registered trademark.

The invention, made by Jan Prochazka, has attracted interest abroad. The licence for its production and sale has been sold to companies in Australia, New Zealand, Poland and South Africa, the paper writes.

HN recalls that a new Centre for Innovations of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnologies, built thanks to finances from the European Union, will open in Prague Tuesday.

The centre is to speed up the application of base research in practice. "It has state-of-the-art equipment to test technologies," its director Zdenek Samec said.

Among others, the centre will focus on surfaces exposed to sunlight or temperature cycles. This is to test technologies used for the reconstruction of historical buildings, the paper writes.

Once submitted to the EPA for the necessary approval/s, will the bureaucrats get it right, or screw the pooch?

Via The Prague Daily Monitor