Clean drinking water in four hours
With the help of Prevas, 4Life Solutions has invented the water purifier SaWa, which can purify drinking water for people in the world's poorest countries. At the same time, the solution is inexpensive, safe, easy to use and environmentally sound variant.
It sounds almost too good to be true. But it’s a fact: A user-friendly, inexpensive, and environmentally sound variant will soon be ready for use in the world’s poorest countries.
The idea arose when Alexander Løcke was preparing for his final exam at Designskolen Aalborg in Denmark. Here he invented the product SolarSack, which could convert contaminated, bacteria-laden water into safe drinking water in the space of a few hours. And to top it all off, solely by using a plastic bag and the sun’s rays.
99.99% of all bacteria and viruses will have been removed from the water by means of UV radiation when the process is complete. A SolarSack lasts for up to one year and can produce 2000 liters of safe drinking water.
It is difficult for users to determine when the water is clean. Consequently, 4Life Solutions is in the process of developing a UV indicator, which will display when the water is safe to drink.
“There was just one problem with the first version of the indicator: It was too expensive,” explains Poul Bundgaard, COO at 4Life Solutions, the company founded by Alexander Løcke.
As a result, 4Life Solutions contacted Prevas to help them bring down the cost of the indicator. Prevas has extensive experience in designing and developing electronics, software, and mechanics for equipment in the energy, food, and life science industries.
“We can develop completely new products from scratch, but also work with product maturation based on prototyping or “proof of concept. SolarSack came up with a prototype, which was good, but reducing the price to less than one dollar per unit was a nigh impossible task,” explains Henrik Møller, Director of Prevas in Denmark.
Despite this, Prevas still succeeded in redesigning the product and using alternative components in the form of LEDs that were both reliable and cheap enough to be cast into the water containers instead of solar cells. The newly developed product has now been put into production at a Danish company in Switzerland. It is expected to be ready for distribution in 2021.
The people at 4Life Solutions are extremely pleased with the help provided by Prevas.
“It is extremely important that SolarSack is inexpensive, easy to use and safe. If users do not feel they can rely on the water treated in a SolarSack to be safe, they naturally fall back into old patterns where they, for example, cut down trees to provide firewood for boiling their drinking water,” explains Poul Bundgaard.
4Life Solutions has high expectations regarding the rollout of the new SolarSack, which it calls a SaWa. In this case it stands for Safe Water, but SaWa also means OK in Swahili. “Safe drinking water can significantly reduce the occurrence of a wide range of diseases such as cholera and typhoid. 500,000 people die each year as a result of having no clean drinking water. We would like to help minimize that number,” concludes Poul Bundgaard.
More about the collaboration between Prevas and 4Life Solutions.
Captions:
A SaWa resembles an ordinary blue plastic bag at first sight. But in the space of four hours, it is able to convert biologically contaminated water into clean drinking water solely by means of the sun’s rays.
For more information, contact
Henrik Møller, President, Prevas A/S, Tel: +45 29 49 92 02, E-mail: henrik.moller@prevas.dk
Poul Bundgaard, COO, 4Life Solutions, Tel: +45 40 41 38 14, E-mail: pb@solarsack.com
Johan Strid, President & CEO, Prevas AB, Mobile: +46 703 79 10 61, E-mail: johan.strid@prevas.se
About Prevas
Prevas is a development hub with ingenuity at its core. With a high technical competence and a deep business understanding, we help customers from a wide variety of industries benefit through continuous technological innovation. Good for people, planet, and profit. Prevas was established in 1985 and currently employs 800 people in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Prevas is listed on NASDAQ Stockholm since 1998. For more information about Prevas, visit www.prevas.com.
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