WisconsInnovation

What is innovation and what is the purpose behind innovation? Innovation by itself would be of no meaning to anyone if it did not provide solutions; solutions to any current day problem that we are facing. And if there is a new way of fulfilling a basic necessity of billions of people around the world that is cheaper, easier and greener than any other way then what else do we need to talk about? And even if the new way has been around for a few years in some part of the world I think it is still relevant to talk about it here because I know that almost all the audience in this blog do not have an inkling about what SODIS is?

Let me start this by writing about a very important topic. Death. One of the leading causes of death in developing countries is contaminated water. Water borne disease such as diarrheal disease (one of the common ones) is responsible for the deaths of more than 1.8 million people every year. It also kills 12,000 children in Nepal every year ;-( . And the sad thing is that the number of deaths around the world can be easily reduced by making the water safer to drink.

Solar water disinfection (SODIS) is one of the alternate methods of making drinking water safe. Unlike costly methods that use fossil fuels or wood to boil water this method is really cheap and even the poorest people in the world can get access to safe drinking water with this method. All you need to get safer water with SODIS is sunlight and a transparent polyethylene bottle. In this method water is kept in the bottle and left in the sunlight for around 5 hours.

Three effects of solar radiation are believed to contribute to the inactivation of bacterial organisms of the water. UV-A, interferes directly with the metabolism and destroys cell structures of bacteria. UV-A (wavelength 320-400nm) reacts with oxygen dissolved in the water and produces highly reactive forms of oxygen (oxygen free radicals and hydrogen peroxides), that are believed to also damage pathogens. Infrared radiation heats the water and if the water temperatures rises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster.

SODIS method was developed after extensive laboratory and field tests by Eawag (The Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) and Sandec (Eawag's Department of Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries) in the 1990’s. Due to this new technique in making water safer it has been really popular in developing countries. Its effectiveness means that even the World Health Organization recommends it as a viable method for household water treatment and safe storage. Research studies have found that effective usage of SODIS helps reduce instances of diarrhea by up to 80%.

Some of the few things to keep in mind to use this method is that the water should be kept in the sunlight for around 5 hrs or more depending upon how bright the sun is, the water bottles should be changed from time to time (because it may get scratched or wear out), the water bottle used should not be more than a 2 liter bottle for maximum effect.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get clean and green (:-)) water.