‘Make, Create, Innovate’ is a fortnightly science and technology series that tells the stories behind the inventions and technological breakthroughs that are reshaping our world.
In this segment, host Nick Glass travels to Copenhagen to visit two Danish protein chemists who have developed a system to create ‘ultrapure’ water.
While clean water is key to our survival, there is a growing demand for ‘ultrapure’ water in the electronics, pharmaceutical and energy industry. In electronics, solutions with no particles in them are needed to clean tiny components such as semi-conductors or transistors, many of which now are one-hundredth of the width of a penny.
Chemists Jensen and Helix-Nielsen have developed a revolutionary new filter that allows only water molecules to pass through and nothing else. The result is ‘ultrapure water’, the market for which has exploded in the last 2-3 years to be worth an estimated $360 billion. With their new filter, the Aquaporin team hope they can satisfy the growing demand.