The 8th Global-NAMRIP project: water disinfection by bubble activity
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The 8th Global-NAMRIP project was today funded by the “Compagnia San Paolo” (Scheme “Metti in rete la tua Ricerca” ), entitled ‘Bubbles for life:
hydrodynamic cavitation for water disinfection in developing countries’. Led by Constantino Manes, who recently left the University of Southampton to take up a position at the Polytechnic of Turin, it is a partnership with Professor Leighton (Southampton University) and the Italian company Società Metropolitana Acque Torino (SMAT). The objective is to design reliable and low-cost reactors that can be used in developing countries to make water sufficiently clean and safe for drinking, without use of chemicals, or to enhance the efficacy of chemicals (allowing lower concentrations to be used, making chemical approaches more affordable for the developing world).
There are currently about 780 million people in the world who have no access to drinkable water sources. As a result of this, more than 3 million people die every year of sanitation and hygiene related issues and 99% of all deaths occur in developing countries. Such a water emergency is caused by several issues. Among these, the lack of appropriate water-treatment methods plays an important role. Technologies that are commonly and successfully used in the developed world cannot be used so easily in developing countries as they are associated with high costs of installation, maintenance and operation and they require the use of chemicals that are not easy to retrieve.