SoLED a UV-LED Solar water disinfection

According to UNICEF, universal access to safe drinking water is a fundamental need and human right. Sanitation and household water treatment practices in developing countries often result in the recontamination of drinking water with raw sewage and introduction of pathogenic organisms as Escherichia coli, Shigella flexneri, Salmonella typhimurium, Hepatitis A and even Corona virus, reinforcing the case for point-of-use treatment systems. Designing sustainable “point-of-use” water treatment technologies is a challenging problem, as they must be low-cost, technologically effective, simple to use, and socially acceptable. Our SoLED POU system is an easy-to-operate and cost-effective device that effectively inactivates pathogenic microorganisms thus preventing the spread of diseases from pathogens (we also tested COVID virus by our LEDs). We developed our system by optimizing the proven Catalyst-UV-LED disinfection technology using a patented technology with combination of low cost UV LEDs, which enables a durable low-cost solution with minimum energy consumption.

Use of new water technology to obtain high-quality water, if implemented correctly, can even be a source of conflict resolution; civilizations can be transformed. According to the World Health Organization, in the developing world, 2–3 billion people do not have safely managed drinking water and sanitation services. Instead, they collect and store household water, often in open containers without any treatment or residual disinfectant. Current conventional and advanced methods for the removal or degradation of bulk, persistent and emerging contaminants in water are limited, since they often involve intensive capital, lack of adaptive technological tools, social barriers and emphasis on centralized systems. Thus, to meet the challenges, it will be necessary to develop interventions with decentralized, effective, scalable and adaptive technologies to address the enormous diversity in water-quality parameters and targets. According to an assessment commissioned by the United Nations, 4,000 children die daily as a result of diseases caused by ingestion of unsafe water. To disrupt the vectors for transmission of disease outbreaks, there is a dire need for innovative solutions in ground water wells, streams and sewage, and for widespread decentralized systems suitable for rural areas and low income settings.

Our solution is a stand-alone water flow system that oxidizes organic pollutants, and mainly disinfects pathogenic organisms in a flow through system. The water pipe is built of a novel reactor that combines UV-LED (light-emitting diodes) and photodriven metal free supported nano-catalyst to provide optimal pathogen inactivation. The system can be demonstrated in rural area and it will purify 1L every minute, which accumulates to over the average family water consumption according to the WHO regulations (7.2L a day per person).

Our target population is communities in developing countries around the globe. These types of countries have a burning need for our solution due to the highly contaminated drinking water and limited infrastructure which don’t enable the implementation of modern industrial solutions, it can be in India, Africa, or any other continent. We hold deep knowledge of the target audience's needs and limitations as well as vast experience in humanitarian contexts, including ongoing expeditions and projects in rural India. We are constantly working with villages in India to develop suitable solutions as we are true believers in understanding the real nature and culture of our targets especially when we are handling the most common need of a human being – drinking water. In the past few years, we established relationships in India and some humanitarian organizations including real-life implementation pilots of our solutions. We deeply understand the context and limitations, and constantly get feedback from the communities and common people to make sure the solution is appropriate for real-life usage.  

As our solution kills any bacteria, viruses, or parasites in drinking water, it directly prevents the spread of diseases through the water in developing communities.

We intend to formulate and design sustainable and advanced nanotechnology integrated UV/Solar LED disinfection systems accessible for developing countries. Our uniqueness is reflected by synchronized LED and nanotechnologies to provide a simple but powerful solution for communities. We are optimizing the LED technology using a patented multi-wavelength method which provides optimal efficiency combined with proprietary nanomaterials that enhance the disinfection effect. Furthermore, we use a solar-based power source that makes it portable, low cost, and off-grid. Currently, off-grid solutions are either good for personal use only (e.g. special bottles, straws) or hold other limitations like chemical by-products, require high maintenance efforts or trained personnel which is hard to find in the targeted areas, as well as not effective against all pathogens. For example, membranes that are energy intensive, UV Mercury vapor-lamps which cannot be adapted to off the grid situations, and mercury is polluting if not disposed properly, desalination which can be off shore for saline groundwater or near the sea but is energy intensive and expensive, ozonation produced on-site require specialized equipment and maintenance. Our solution provides the highest purification effect with minimal set-up, training, and economic requirements. Moreover, many of the POU devices available on the market today are not maintained due to high cost of maintenance and replacement parts. In our technology, solar energy will offset greenhouse gas emissions by adding value to the water–energy nexus concept. Renewable solar energy has already proven to contribute ecological, social and economic benefits as a source for treating water.

Assessing the potential application of LEDs for AOPs in water treatment. The UV-LED allowing for flexible tailored design of UV systems that combine selected wavelengths for optimal inactivation of different pathogens. In addition, LEDs are physically small, mercury-free (i.e., they are safe and environmentally friendly to dispose), with fast startup time and long lifespan compared to the traditional mercury vapor lamps. Moreover, UV-LEDs have low power and energy efficiencies, which can be operated by solar energy. The performance efficiency of the LED engineered photon disinfection system can be enhanced by designing a nano-catalytic coating to surfaces. The coating utilizes a phenomenon known as photocatalysis, in which the energy on light triggers a chemical reaction that produces short-lived reactive oxygen species. The reaction is produced by a nano-catalyst (g-C3N4-TiO2). Currently, photocatalytic finishes are used on self-cleaning facades, windows and in air-purifier filters. Previously, the main obstacle in using photocatalysis was that it could be activated only with UV wavelengths, which meant that sunlight or UV lamps were needed to initiate the reaction. Since the advance growth in LED industry, new catalytic compounds arrived on the market that can also be activated with wavelengths of visible light (>410nm). Generally, photocatalytic performance is greatly influenced by two factors: (1) the number of photons absorbed by the material and (2) the separation efficiency of the photo-generated electron-hole pairs. Considering this, we developed one dimensional (1-D) graphitic carbon nitride based anatase phase TiO2 (g-C3N4-TiO2) as nano-catalyst via sol-gel and solvothermal process.   

Many solutions around the world have been proven the realization of UV-LED irradiation for inactivation of various microorganisms including viruses and bacteria within water systems in various use cases (I.e https://www.aquisense.com/water-treatment). A novel research conducted in our Water-Tech lab that is internationally patented proved that UV-LEDs are highly efficient against viruses enhanced by synergetic effects of UVC and UVB (https://data.epo.org/gpi/EP3583072A1-METHOD-AND-DEVICE-FOR-WATER-DISINFECTION). Our latest results showed 99.99% disinfection of Covid virus with various LEDs and their combinations. Moreover, the combination of Heterogeneous photocatalytic oxidation process (HPO) by using TiO2 (titanium dioxide) and UV (ultraviolet) rays is a promising for the decomposition of resistant organic pollutants and disinfecting water borne microbes (Stoyanova et al., 2018, Angelica et al., 2019). Another key advantage of UV-solar LEDs is the ability to select their emission wavelength for optimized disinfection. Ag doped TiO2 developed by (Szabolcs et al., 2016) photoreactive surface coatings, possessing antibacterial properties (5 log reduction of cfu in 2 h) and activated under visible light illumination (λmax = 405 nm) using LED-light source.

Our vision is to provide decentralized treated water at an affordable cost. We have the mindset to provide affordable clean water using off the grid LEDs and advanced materials integrated in a smart patented reactor design.

Our first year goal is to demonstrate our product in two sites in India and in the sire chosen by Pears foundation, and develop further partnerships with universities, NGOs, governments. To achieve this goal, we will design and thoroughly field-test and access monitoring approach. The approach will integrate self-reported data from individuals (using a simple app) and low cost physical monitoring tools.

Year one should follow successful implementations in several rural areas during the year, that will provide us the required feedback loops to adjust and optimize our solution.

Onwards from year 3-5 we plan to begin replication of our system by mass production and develop a distribution and service line.

Also, we plan to mature the technology to utilization for additional users as modern home use.

In five years we aim to make our solution the standard water system in off the grid rural areas, providing clean drinking water to the mass population in developing countries while dramatically reducing water-borne diseases in these countries. This will be conducted in cooperation with governments and humanitarian organizations. We hope that our invention will be used at scale to reduce the number of children that drink pathogens in water and the sad associated outcome, by providing pathogen free water to millions of people.

The solution is developed by a joint venture that was established in 2017 between Atlantium LTD and the Water-Tech Laboratory, Tel Aviv University (TAU). The JV started for an ongoing development partnership that focuses on a UV-based water treatment system, where Atlantium provides industry and distribution know-how while the lab provides the research capabilities and domain expertise.  Atlantium is an Israeli hi-tech company in the field of water treatment with a patented Hydro-Optic™ (HOD) ultraviolet (UV) technology. The water-tech laboratory, TAU – founded in 2007 by Prof. Hadas Mamane. The lab is one of the Israeli leaders in research and implementation of advanced technology for water treatment focusing on several verticals: low-cost water treatment for developing countries, hospital wastewater treatment, and municipally wastewater treatment.

The Water-Tech lab is engaged in educational service to public on environmental topics: as lectures and hands-on experiments for high school students, teachers, engineers without borders (EWB-TAU), Alfa program, youth seeking science programs, promoting woman in science, students from periphery etc. Also we are involved in many programs in developing countries and especially in India related to environmental and water issues and transfer of the environmental mission which includes wastewater reuse and water treatment.

Funds and demonstration of our technology:

1. 2018-2020: MAGNETON Program for Technology Transfer from academy to industry - Israel Innovation Authority, a novel UV system with an enhanced effect for water by combined wavelengths (based on a patent) with co-PI Dr. Yoram Gerchman and Industrial partner: Atlantium LTD
2. 2020-2021: Pears challenge Israeli Entrepreneurship Program to pilot our Technology in Humanitarian settings with IsraAID with co-PI Dr. Yoram Gerchman and Industrial partner: Atlantium LTD
3. A collaborative work between Tel-Aviv University (https://www.tau.ac.il/) and Amrita University (https://www.amrita.edu/), as a demonstration site for the respected technology
4. SPARC Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration, IITM, India on Next generation multifunctional aerogels for treating soluble microplastics, pesticides, and drugs in water and recovery
5. 2020: Data Science center at TAU: Improving Control of Wastewater treatment by Deep Learning Analysis
6. 2020: Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology Corona virus research on disinfection of SARS-CoV2 virus

One approach (communal approach) expects little in terms of fees or effort from communities, providing safe water by our system at low or zero cost and potentially even delivering it to households at no charge, which helps achieve higher usage. Treatment systems are handed over to community based organizations (CBO), local governing bodies to manage and pay the fees of purchasing the systems. The disadvantage is that without fee collection, both the installation and maintenance costs will have to be entirely contributed externally by the government, reducing the potential number of installations allowed by the available budget and benefiting fewer communities. The contrasting business approach attempts to recover costs from households in order to increase the potential number of installations and to ensure systems are maintained and impacts are sustainable. To achieve this, systems are usually handed over dedicated organizations who are allowed to charge for usage and even profit, such as entrepreneurs or restricted consumer committees. We plan to design the business models according to the local settings that we plan to diffuse our technology and our services, consequently the answer to this questions depends on the area of impact. To be successful we will need to obtain evidence on the impacts of several social and business models for sustainable utilization of our water treatment novel product. 

We are currently funded by the Israeli Innovation Authority that funds innovative solutions that foster the development of industrial and academic R&D, for the past three years which terminates on August 2020. Our intention is to make an impact on water disinfection, thus we plan to try every effort to as we believe that our system is transformational. Our core technology is suitable for rural areas but also for non-capital-challenged countries. Thus it potentially holds a great business opportunity. The technology opens a new stream of LED-based solutions in a wide range of services and applications including but not limited to green buildings who will find it as an easy-to-implement our solution for built-in purification systems that will replace the traditional home-use solutions, as well as personal and home-use systems. We plan to fund the development of the core technology by grants and donations, and further upon field demonstration sell our device through distributing organizations. Later we will act as a research partner to apply the technology on various use cases while licensing the technology and offering a range of consulting and research services. We plan with your support, if granted, to hire a business consultant to prepare a business plan that will include components for bringing in money to fund our work, whether through sustained donations and grants, selling products or services, raising investment capital.