Detecting the bio-potential changes of plants would be useful for monitoring their growth and health in the field. A sensitive plant monitoring system with flexible boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrodes prepared from BDD powder and resin (Nafion or Vylon-KE1830) was investigated. The properties of the electrodes were compared with those of small BDD plate-type electrodes by monitoring the bioelectric potentials of potted Aloe and hybrid species in the genus Opuntia. While flexible BDD electrodes have wide potential windows, their cyclic voltammograms are different from those of the BDD plate. Further, the potential gap between a pair of electrodes attached to the plants changes as the plants are stimulated artificially with a finger touch, suggesting that the bioelectric potentials in the plant also changed, manifesting as changes in the potential gap between the electrodes. The BDD electrodes were assessed for their response reproducibility to a finger stimulus for 30 days. It was concluded that the plant monitoring system worked well with flexible BDD electrodes. Further, the electrodes were stable, and as reliable as the BDD plate electrodes in this study. Thus, a flexible and inexpensive BDD electrode system was successfully fabricated for monitoring the bioelectric potential changes in plants.

We describe a sensitive plant monitoring system by the detection of the bioelectric potentials in plants with boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrodes. For sensor electrodes, we used commercially available BDD, Ag, and Pt plate electrodes. We tested this approach on a hybrid species in the genus Opuntia (potted) and three different trees (ground-planted) at different places in Japan. For the Opuntia, we artificially induced bioelectric potential changes by the surface potential using the fingers. We detected substantial changes in bioelectric potentials through all electrodes during finger touches on the surface of potted Opuntia hybrid plants, although the BDD electrodes were several times more sensitive to bioelectric potential change compared to the other electrodes. Similarly for ground-planted trees, we found that both BDD and Pt electrodes detected bioelectric potential change induced by changing environmental factors (temperature and humidity) for months without replacing/removing/changing electrodes, BDD electrodes were 5–10 times more sensitive in this detection than Pt electrodes. Given these results, we conclude that BDD electrodes on live plant tissue were able to consistently detect bioelectrical potential changes in plants.

A simple, convenient, reusable, and inexpensive air- and water-purification unit including a one-end sealed porous amorphous-silica (a-silica) tube coated with TiO2 photocatalyst layers has been developed. The porous a-silica layers were formed through outside vapor deposition (OVD). TiO2 photocatalyst layers were formed through impregnation and calcination onto a-silica layers. The resulting porous TiO2-impregnated a-silica tubes were evaluated for air-purification capacity using an acetaldehyde gas decomposition test. The tube (8.5 mm e.d. × 150 mm) demonstrated a 93% removal rate for high concentrations (ca. 300 ppm) of acetaldehyde gas at a single-pass condition with a 250 mL/min flow rate under UV irradiation. The tube also demonstrated a water purification capacity at a rate 2.0 times higher than a-silica tube without TiO2 impregnation. Therefore, the tubes have a great potential for developing compact and in-line VOC removal and water-purification units.

The recent applications of a TiO₂-modified Ti-mesh filter (TMiP™) for water purification are summarized with newly collected data including biological assays as well as sewage water treatment. The water purification reactors consist of the combination of a TMiP, a UV lamp, an excimer VUV lamp, and an ozonation unit. The water purification abilities of the reactor were evaluated by decomposition of organic contaminants, inactivation of waterborne pathogens, and treatment efficiency for sewage water. The UV-C/TMiP/O₃ reactor disinfected E. coli in aqueous suspension in approximately 1 min completely, and also decreased the number of E. coli in sewage water in 15 min dramatically. The observed rate constants of 7.5 L/min and 1.3 L/min were calculated by pseudo-first-order kinetic analysis respectively. Although organic substances in sewage water were supposed to prevent the UV-C/TMiP/O₃ reactor from purifying water, the reactor reduced E. coli in sewage water continuously. On the other hand, although much higher efficiencies for decomposition of organic pollutants in water were achieved in the excimer/TMiP reactor, the disinfection activity of the reactor for waterborne pathogens was not as effective as the other reactors. The difference of efficiency between organic pollutants and waterborne pathogens in the excimer/TMiP reactor may be due to the size, the structure, and the decomposition mechanism of the organic pollutants and waterborne pathogens. These results show that a suitable system assisted by synergy of photocatalysts and other technologies such as ozonation has a huge potential as a practical wastewater purification system.

TiO₂-coated porous silica glass tubes containing macropores were fabricated and evaluated for their water-purification capacity using aqueous solutions of methylene blue. From the results of photocatalytic degradation tests at different initial methylene blue concentrations, the equilibrium adsorption constant (K) was determined to be 4.6 × 10⁻² L µmol⁻¹, and the Langmuir-Hinshelwood rate constant (k_LH) was calculated as 2.6 µM min⁻¹. To determine the influence of ions on the efficiency of methylene blue degradation, we examined both Milli-Q water (soft water) and Contrex water (hard water) as solvents, and confirmed the reduced purification for the Contrex solution. It was, therefore, considered that the presence of inorganic salts decreased the photocatalytic efficiency. Furthermore, variations in the methylene blue decomposition ability were observed between anion-free and cation-free Contrex. Finally, we concluded that the efficiency of photocatalytic decomposition of TiO₂ was influenced by multiple parameters, including the presence of anions and cations, as well as the solution pH.