Robust filtering machines from Siemens are producing drinking water in slums and areas without any infrastructure. The Skyhydrant system, which uses state-of-the-art filter membranes, requires neither electrical power nor chemicals and is easy to operate. The machine is about one and a half meters high and weighs twelve kilograms. It costs $3,500 and purifies 10,000 liters of water per day.
Credit: Siemens
As reported in the latest edition of Pictures of the Future, there is now a fully automatic successor too: the AquaVendor, which costs $7,000, is likewise based on membrane filters and can treat as much as 25,000 liters of water per day. It needs electricity for its control unit and the fan, which forces air into the membrane filter every 20 to 30 minutes to clean it. This mobile system is intended for residential buildings, hotels, and small industrial firms in areas that lack modern infrastructure.
There are currently approximately 900 million people worldwide who have no access to clean drinking water. The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.8 million of them die every year from diarrhea. Without access to drinking water, people often become ill, need expensive medicines, and miss countless days of work or school.
The Skyhydrant, which was developed by engineers from Siemens Water Technologies in Australia, is a solution that people without special technical skills can use to purify water almost anywhere. It is based on the same high-tech membrane filters that Siemens uses in systems for waterworks and industry. The
heart of the filter is a vertically suspended cylinder containing about 10,000 thin tubes. The tubes are about a meter long and just a millimeter in diameter, and their walls are covered with membranes. The pores in the membranes are only one ten thousandth of a millimeter in diameter and allow neither particulatematter nor bacteria to pass through. Viruses are filtered out too, because they are always attached to other bigger organisms.
Unclean liquid flows downward across the outside of the tubes, and the clean water is forced through the membrane into the tubes and drawn off. Once a month, clear water is backflushed through the Skyhydrant in order to clean it.
A Skyhydrant in a slum in Jakarta, Indonesia, has been providing 180 families with a reliable supply of clean water for four years. In a village in Kenya, the Siemens Foundation used Skyhydrants to set up "safe water kiosks." The kiosk operators purify the dirty river water and sell drinking water.
There are currently approximately 900 million people worldwide who have no access to clean drinking water. The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.8 million of them die every year from diarrhea. Without access to drinking water, people often become ill, need expensive medicines, and miss countless days of work or school.
The Skyhydrant, which was developed by engineers from Siemens Water Technologies in Australia, is a solution that people without special technical skills can use to purify water almost anywhere. It is based on the same high-tech membrane filters that Siemens uses in systems for waterworks and industry. The
heart of the filter is a vertically suspended cylinder containing about 10,000 thin tubes. The tubes are about a meter long and just a millimeter in diameter, and their walls are covered with membranes. The pores in the membranes are only one ten thousandth of a millimeter in diameter and allow neither particulatematter nor bacteria to pass through. Viruses are filtered out too, because they are always attached to other bigger organisms.
Unclean liquid flows downward across the outside of the tubes, and the clean water is forced through the membrane into the tubes and drawn off. Once a month, clear water is backflushed through the Skyhydrant in order to clean it.
A Skyhydrant in a slum in Jakarta, Indonesia, has been providing 180 families with a reliable supply of clean water for four years. In a village in Kenya, the Siemens Foundation used Skyhydrants to set up "safe water kiosks." The kiosk operators purify the dirty river water and sell drinking water.
Source: Siemens
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