A water bottle that uses ultraviolet light to sterilise drinking water has won the UK competition in this year's James Dyson award.
InventorTim Whitehead is now looking to win the overall £10,000 prize fund with his innovative sterilising tech.
Pure and simple
Whitehead, a design and technology graduate from from Loughborough University, came up with the idea for the clean water bottle while travelling in Africa.
The Pure bottle means that there is no longer the need to use chlorine and iodine tablets to purify drinking water
Whitehead's design will be put forward for Dyson's global final this coming October.
Whitehead said of the Pure bottle tech: "I thought that there must be a way of using new technology to clean drinking water. I began experimenting with using ultraviolet light to sterilise water quickly, without any distortion to taste."
How does it work?
The tech is both simple and effective. Users put dirty water into an outer chamber and then a filtering inner chamber is plunged through the water.
After the initial filtering, the water is finally sterilised by a wind-up ultraviolet bulb, which takes only 90 seconds.
Whitehead's prototype has been shown to eliminate 99.9 per cent of bacteria and viruses.
Dyson Award judge Professor Matthew Harrison, of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said of the tech: "Pure provides a practical solution to a real problem - how to get clean drinking water in the most hostile of conditions.
"It has the potential to make a real difference to people's lives."
Via BBC News
