Cape York faces a number of issues, ranging from harsh weather conditions to difficult terrain over long distances, and a general lack of infrastructure. Our team from De Montfort University decided to tackle both a lack of clean, potable water and the generation of plastic waste through the SODIS programme.
Solar disinfection is used to make water from a variety of sources drinkable. It works by passing UV rays and heat from the Sun through reusable PET plastic bottles to eliminate bacteria and viruses from the water. Our project created a parabolic reflector to hold these bottles and speed up the process.
We aim for it to be introduced at ranger bases and at isolated households to allow people to live and work on Country in a non-intrusive manner.
The product can be operated by anyone, requires limited maintenance and technology, is portable, and operates at a low cost. By reusing bottles and generating clean water, it reduces the dependency on bottled water which is expensive and environmentally intensive to make and transport, so the project is sustainable.
Thank you for reading and if you want to learn more then please refer to our report and video. We hope that you enjoy it!
Team Members:
Ellie Mae Lilliott
@Yelena Elysia Estepa
@Tom Skinner
@Joseph Weaver
#water #waste #solar #capeyork #ewb #engineering4people #dmu #demontfortuniversity #sustainable #costeffective #userfriendly