Providing clean water to the world population is one of the 14 grand challenges for engineering. At some part of the world, engineers are developing new technology to provide clean water. Scientists at the University of Aberdeen came up with an idea of using sunlight to treat dirty water. This new research is capable of creating electricity simultaneously. The new research program known as the sunlight-driven technology is supported by three industrial partners namely the OpTIC Technium, Yorkshire Water and Scotoil Services. The three industrial partners have diversified the project into individual sectors. The Yorkshire will focus on the potential within water supply, the Scotoil will offers industry knowledge and testing facilities and the OpTIC Technium will support the manufacturing expertise. This project is funded by the UK Government Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and they has committed a total of £1.2m. Dr Donald Macphee stated that it is an environmental-friendly technology aiming to clean up the pollutants found in the water supply. On top of that, this technology is capable of providing electricity. It has the potential to be a cost effective and environmental- friendly technology. This new technology will include treatment of industrial liquid waste, polluted water from landfill sites and dirt from oil and gas sector. In addition to that, it is suitable for the treatment of contaminated water in the developing countries. Thus, the success of this technology would bring the developing countries an improvement to their water supply. All in all, this new research would carry on for three years. The objective of this project is simply to enhance the water quality in the developing countries as well as to provide access to clean water in more regions. A technology that is so cost effective and does not possess a threat to the environmental is indeed a great invention.
Ray of light for water industry
Retrieved September 20, 2008 from
http://www.physorg.com/news3919.html
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In today's world, water shortage is a major problem faced in most developing countries as they do not have the ability to carry out research or build the sophisticated machines to clean up polluted water to generate fresh water.
From Chin Wee's article, I learnt that a new technology is evolving in converting waste water into fresh water just like the Newater system in Singapore. This is indeed a great research as it is cost effective and able to generate electricity at the same time. If the technology is successful, developing countries will be able to use them to provide fresh water.
From then on, water shortage in developing countries will be greatly cut down. What the researchers can do perhaps is to improve the output if possible. I certainly agree with the UK government to invest in this research as this technology is beneficial to the world.
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