No. 408: Using coffee beans for a water purification agent (January 12, 2012)

Techonology

Generally, such inorganic substances as calcium and shell power are used to neutralize and agglutinate pollutants in water for water purification. Nippon Poly-Glu, a maker of water purification agents, developed an agent for water purification using coffee beans for developing countries. The new agent agglutinates pollutants in water by utilizing the stringent taste contained in the peel of coffee fruit. With this coffee bean-based agent, it is possible to reduce the water purification cost to 75 yen per ton, half of the cost required by the existing method that uses such inorganic substances as those mentioned above.

Because coffee peels are abandoned, the cost to procure raw materials is not high. In addition, all ingredients contained in the new agent are organic, they resolve in the body and nature ultimately. This benefit is helpful to reduce the amount of inorganic residues that is a big problem to purify water in ponds and rivers in developing countries. The company is marketing water that it infiltrates using its own agents in Bangladesh. It plans to expand the market to other Asian countries and Africa. Production of the new agent will start in Brazil and Kenya this summer with projected sales of 300 million yen in the initial year.