Water Purification System

About

Background and need The production of affordable abundant drinking water is becoming more and more important throughout all cultures to sustain life. Climate change, increasing populations, catastrophes and water resource mismanagement are making potable drinking water scarcer than ever. Increasingly the population centres are migrating from large city hubs to more remote “off grid” colonies, whose water is being found further afield in more abstract sources such as boreholes, rivers, ponds, and lakes. It is within these sources that bacteria and pathogens are found which when consumed by humans will give mild to severe illnesses resulting in possible incapacity in adults to mortalities in youngsters, particularly in the emerging countries where sanitation and the leaking of chemicals into the drinking water are commonplace. Alternatives to our solution are Reverse Osmosis units that have very high-power consumption due to the high pressures involved in processing the water. it also strips out natural nutrients and is extremely wasteful, with up to 50% of the processed water going to waste. This has been a common practise over the past few decades that appears to be widely regarded as the catch all solution. Commonly used by city water companies are additives to the water, such as chlorine dioxide, ozone, and UV, which are aimed to kill bacteria in the water and provide short-term protection of regrowth. Our systems have a sustainable answer........ The Company vision was to challenge the water industry norm that relies on 1970s thought processes and technologies that are not resource efficient and use very harmful chemicals both during normal filtration and in cleaning by creating a fully automated, monitored, low carbon footprint, sustainable water purification system. Now imagine areas of the world that are off grid, perhaps have no power or safe water. With our unit hooked up to solar panels & wind turbines with battery backup we can run water purification from source waters of pond, lakes and rivers using low power and with high efficiency that self-cleans and does not require a mountain of throw away filters so common in today’s society. . Thus, negate the manufacturing carbon footprint of the throw away filters as Ultrafiltration Membrane filters through our self cleaning process when ever needed. Through designing, manufacturing small water filtration solutions we can support small communities that are off grid with drinking water and other industries such as agriculture and farming that require more complex solutions that are sustainable for feeding to crops and livestock. We wanted to use as much as possible technology that already existed rather than inventing one off circuit boards so felt it very important to identify key parts of the solution such as pumps and engage with the manufacturers where possible. Through teaming we were able to identify and integrate already great standalone products into an awesome product to reduce waste. The Product we have now developed is a modular solution designed to clean microbiologically & physio-chemically contaminated fresh water. The system is capable of supplying (both long term and short term) high quality potable water to World Health Organisation (WHO) Guidelines 2017, Table 7.10, Drinking Water Directive (DWD) 1988 Council Directive 98/83/EC Part A and The Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 2016 (No.614) Table A incorporating amendment (No.706) 2018. fit for the consumer for drinking or industrial utilisation that will keep the processed water safe from re- contamination for short to medium periods of time. We initially teamed up with Professor Reynolds from the University of West England (UWE) who is a foremost expert in microbiological water contamination. Working with him we developed a way to quickly kill microbiological contamination in the water for significant periods of time using a synthetic solution of Hypochlorous acid that matched that produced by white blood cells in Mammals as part of the immune system. Indeed, the same process was found to stop biological biofilm growing within new pipes and was able to remove that in existing pipework. Using this solution, it was thought that pairing up with a water purifier it could produce a truly unique system that was able to sustain itself without the need of harmful products. This thought process brought our focus to existing companies who specialise in the disinfection generation, one of which, Envirolyte supply us with the disinfection generator that is integrated into our product. Thus, we have overcome the need for any environmentally unsavoury chemicals. Further, there is no need to worry about how to dispose of the said chemicals as our disinfection simply reverts to salt and water on discharge. The system we built is still running as a show room over 2 years later cleaning the contents of a contaminated lake and producing drinking water being only protected by a tent through the UK weather. The efficacy of the disinfectant is outstanding, it’s able to kill pathogens such as E-Coli, MRSA, Norovirus, Polio, Covid and even Anthrax under a very short contact time with the disinfectant. Through another partner, Grundfos Pumps, we were able to overcome all of the initial system limitations using off the shelf products and some ingenious vision using the existing standard pump products that has a motor and a circuit board to really use the electronic capability to catapult us forward. Using the digital and analogue interfaces we were able to use standard software and functionality to instrument & interconnect the whole system together, to understand what was happening and control it with the result the system became intelligent! The water purification unit currently is available in 3 sizes – 1,000 l/h, 2,000 l/h or 10,000 l/h giving expected maximum volumes per day or 20,000, 40,000 or 200,000 litres every day respectively. (The larger unit is currently being developed) They are able to run 24hrs a day, fully autonomously from fresh water sources such as rivers, ponds, lakes, and boreholes/wells. The components utilised are the most energy economic pumps in the world that are over 90% efficient. The small 1,000l/h unit uses an average power footprint of less than 500watts/hr and uses less than a 10kg bag of salt per month operation time. The solution is made up of 4 modules that are integrated into the full umbrella of control via the water purification unit, generally in broad terms these are: - • Prefiltration such as ionisers and boost pumps, • The water purification unit to remove microbiological contamination, • Water tanks with flow control, • UPS power solution for batter operation for 30 plus minutes and for cleaning dirty power supply. Finally, Test sites have been very difficult to find. Ponds and lakes are rigorously controlled by the environments agency and are so restrictive that they essentially all but stop to testing. Luckily, we were able to gain access to a few privately owned lakes used for fishing to initially test the product that allowed us to better understand the operating envelope of the unit and identify the need to better pre filtration. Also, we have been able to test on a few rivers and been able to successfully replicate some excellent results from the various fresh water sources which have been verified by UCAS accredited labs. Environmentally we have seen no double headed fish in the water! UF membrane manufacturing company, Inge, we discovered that we have surpassed the expected operating envelope by quite some way. Our processes are in some cases renegade to those expected within industry. Inge is now planning to take our unit into their R&D centre in order to re- evaluate the operating process and envelope of their products. Quite something we all think! Commercially we have established multiple showrooms in Europe with a unit running from a bore hole water supply, cleaning the water, and distributing to a small village in Greece using only solar power to run from. Another in a Covid Hospital in Romania that has helped us to complete the European drinking water licensing application process to allow sales to proceed and another saving lives in a Covid Hospital in Romania. Our systems are tried and tested and available right now. Grundfos video showing unit in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbEb6sEEzs Greek show room opening with the Major and the local populous https://www.waterpp.com/mayor-karystos-geroulis-with-waterpp/ Portsmouth Aqua website https://portsmouthaqua.com/