Transform Clothes into Air Purifiers with a Special Laundry Additive

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Chiot’s Run via Flickr

Nitrogen oxides (nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide, collectively NOx) are gas compounds that are normally produced when nitrogen and oxygen gases react during combustion. It is one of the most prominent pollutants today, as a vast majority of our vehicles use internal combustion engines.

While carbon emissions can be usually captured and sequestered even after it is released, it is a bit more difficult to clean up NOx in the air using standard methods. Oftentimes, industrial producers and manufacturers often have to capture NOx before it gets released, so that they could separate nitrogen and oxygen immediately.

Of course, this does not mean that there are no other alternative anti-NOx methods that are in the works. One of the more notable ones is the development of a liquid laundry additive that, when used on clothing, effectively turns it into an anti-NOx air purifier.

CatClo, or Catalytic Clothing, is a special laundry additive that is made up of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles. It has the capability to oxidize NOx in the air when it comes into contact with it. When a piece of clothing is treated with CatClo, it sticks to the clothing, allowing it to become an air purifier when hung outside for drying. Potential users of CatClo need not worry about the clothing being treated with the additive, because it is completely odorless, tasteless and harmless. It does not affect your body systems, and won’t reduce the quality of the clothing that is treated with it. The NOx that gets oxidized in the clothing will also be relatively harmless (since it won’t get anywhere anyway).

Another interesting thing in CatClo is that it reacts with NOx better when it is exposed to light. It is essentially photocatalytic, with the oxidization process getting accelerated at higher sunlight intensities. This means that you can expect CatClo to purify a bit more NOx particles if you’re planning to dry and hang your clothes on a bright sunny day. Specifically however, CatClo treated clothing will be able to purify an average amount of 5 grams of NOx in the air over the course of a single day (which is roughly equivalent to one day’s worth of NOx emissions on a family vehicle). You can just imagine how much NOx we could clean from the air if the entire world starts using CatClo on their laundry.

To properly use CatClo, you simply have to mix it regularly with your laundry cleaning agents like a regular additive. It only needs to be used once actually, because the nanoparticles will adhere permanently to the clothing once used.

Interestingly, the biggest application for CatClo was when it was sprayed over Wendy, a 14-meter high modernistic sculpture covered in nylon fabric that was displayed at the New York’s Museum of Modern Art last summer of 2012. According to the researchers, it was able to suck up NOx equivalent to the amount generated by 260 cars over a 10-week period.

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Christian Crisostomo (251 Posts)

Christian Crisostomo is just your average tech geek that loves to see man's newest and most recent technological exploits. He holds great interest in the potentials of green technology, and is enthusiastic about the continuous development of environment-friendly alternative energy.

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