Purification

Do-yeon Pi of PiQuant in the Republic of Korea is developing a low-cost spectroscopic device and monitoring system, the Water Scanner, that can be nationally deployed to rapidly detect and map Escherichia coli contamination in drinking water in low-resource settings. Water pollution causes up to 90% of diarrheal diseases, which kill 500,000 children under the age of five each year. Water quality is currently measured using spectroscopic devices that are expensive and time-consuming.

Samuel Dorevitch of the University of Illinois at Chicago in the U.S. will build solar-powered ozonation systems to supply purified water to families living in Kenyan slums. Many peri-urban informal settlements (slums) around the world lack safe, affordable drinking water. In the absence of centralized water purification, methods like chlorination, solar disinfection, and filtration can be used. However, these are time-consuming and expensive, and are generally not monitored for water quality.