Clean tech for clean water project in Maldives

I was in Sri-Lanka & Maldive in 1982-83. Maldives is a beautiful islands nation with many small island. They lack of natural river & mountain.

With the Solar technology to purified the sea water, i am sure this would solve the problem of the drinking water issue greatly.

Perhaps country like Singapore, Australia should learn from their experience after Maldives experience.

Clean tech for clean water project in Maldives
Published on 17-Dec-2004
URL: http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=9352

A unique solar-powered, off-grid, water purification project will begin in the Maldives in January 2005, providing local bottled drinking water to be sold to the local community on the island of Kulhudhuffushi.

The project, two years in development, is a joint venture between Solar Energy Systems Infrastructure (SESI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Solco, and a local Maldives company, CDE Pvt Ltd.

Once it is up and running, the project's financier, Solar Investment Fund managed by the Netherlands-based ethical bank Triodos, is considering additional funding for further island water-purification projects throughout the Maldives. The Maldives Foreign Investment Services Bureau has identified twenty islands as having suitable water supplies and a sustainable population base for the units.

The units use solar power to draw the water up from brackish sources below the surface and pass it through a system of reverse osmosis units to remove all pathogens, metals and dissolved solids, using just 20% of the power of a standard reverse osmosis unit.

Each unit can produce 500 litres of water per day from a single 100 Watt (1 square metre) solar panel.

Anthony Maslin, co-founder of Solco Ltd and Executive Director of Solar Energy Systems Infrastructure Ltd, said: "There are other water purification technologies using the same process of reverse osmosis that Solarflow uses, but they are mostly powered by diesel. Solarflow will be cheaper on a price per litre basis and of course have none of diesel's impact on air pollution, climate change or difficulties with maintenance and remote access." Read More...