UV light used to sterilise drinking water

New and upcoming technology has proven a huge success in helping the developing world to sustain itself and this latest innovation could be one of the biggest life savers yet. A water bottle that uses UV light to sterilise water has been designed by Tim Whitehead an Industrial Design and Technology Graduate from Loughborough University and is set to go head to head with international innovations in the James Dyson Award after winning the UK heat.

Tim came up with the idea whilst travelling in Zambia and says 'I thought that there must be a way of using new technology to clean drinking water, I began to experiment with using ultraviolet light to sterilise water quickly, without any distortion to taste.'

Using UV light to sterilise water, the bottle eliminates the need for chlorine and iodine tablets to sterilise drinking water, they can take up to half an hour to work and leave an unpleasant taste. Tests on the Pure reveal that it can sterilise in just two minutes leaving no taste.

And so how does this wonderful piece of technology work? The bottle’s made up of an inner and an outer chamber; the outer chamber is filled with dirty water from either a lake, stream or even a puddle. The inner chamber then plunges into the outer filtering water particles as small as four microns. Once the water’s clear of sediment, it’s sterilised for 90 seconds using a wind up UV bulb.

Tests on a prototype have proven that Pure sterilises 99.9% of bacteria and viruses making it a valuable tool not only for the developing world, but also for anyone undertaking outdoors or remote activities.

Pure has blown away the judges of the James Dyson Award. Matthew Harrison, Professor at the Royal Academy of Engineering and a competition judge, said: ' "Pure’ provides a practical solution to a real problem - how to get clean drinking water in the most hostile of conditions. 'It has the potential to make a real difference to people’s lives which is what good design should be able to do.  The design is intuitive - the designer went beyond a simple prototype to prove that it works through a range of tests.'

Good luck Tim, we’re sure your brilliant use of UV has developed a fantastic product and we’re sure it’ll do well and provoke thought in the global competition. For other effective outdoors uses of UV technology have a look at the Solar Water Bottle