Self-Sustaining Cleaning Technology for Safe Water Supply and Management in Rural African Areas “SafeWaterAfrica”
(Room Room 104-C)
30 Apr 19
10:00 AM
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10:20 AM
Tracks:
Enabling Sustainability — NexGen Tech for Coatings, Surface Engineering and Smart Manufacturing
Water will increasingly become a limited resource and the supply of which will become a major restriction to the future socio-economic development of countries in Africa. This includes both the amount of water available and the quality of what is available. At present, many resources are polluted by industrial effluents, domestic and commercial sewage, acid mine drainage, agricultural runoff and litter. Due to this, a new method for water decontamination is required. One such method is water purification by means of the degradation of contaminants by strong oxidants which are produced electrochemically from the water molecules in the aqueous solution to be treated. This technology of electrochemical advanced oxidation processes by means of diamond electrodes for use in water purification has been previously developed. However, to date only specific large-scale industrial/commercial applications have been developed. Based on the knowledge gained in previous projects, a diamond electrode based water purification system was developed which was tailored according to the particular needs of the target African groups in rural regions of Mozambique and South Africa. Furthermore, a new seeding technique on large area Silicon substrates prior to the diamond deposition will be shown. With the produced diamond electrodes, in addition to tailored solutions in the fields of water disinfection, waste water treatment, and electrochemical synthesis, a low cost, easy-to-handle and solar-powered water purification solution for the decentralized water treatment and supply of safe water in the rural and peri-urban areas of southern African countries will be shown.