The LEDSOL project, as part of the LEAP-RE Portfolio, seeks to enable clean and sustainable water through smart UV/LED disinfection and solar energy utilisation. LEDSOL aims to build a technology that will give access to affordable energy for clean water production to a wide number of beneficiaries, in particular in remote areas.
The project has made progress in implementing the water disinfection unit and has now moved on to laboratory testing. The project used surface water samples from Snagov Lake in Romania that were filtered to remove impurities, and evaluated the disinfection results for a flow rate of 1.5 liters per minute and tested various exposure conditions such as UV-A, UV-C, and UV-A&UV-C. Project partners evaluated the total microbial counts at 22 oC and 37 oC using the ISO 6222:2004 method.
The untreated water samples had a total microbial count of 10,000 cfu/ml. UV-A reduced this value by one order of magnitude while UV-C or combined UV-A&UV-C reduced it by three orders of magnitude. By reducing the water flow rate, we were able to achieve a total microbial count below 10 cfu/ml. The findings are presented in a scientific article that has received preliminary acceptance in the Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities [1], along with user-related aspects and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) raw data collected with Android phones in four locations from Finland, Romania, Netherlands, and Spain. Further developments in the GNSS direction will be presented in a second article under preparation[2].
More information on this will soon be found in the articles below:
[1] K. Bierwirth, T. Kodom, H. Lebik, D. Tassalit, F. Lucas, E.S. Lohan, I. Mocanu, O. Cramariuc, Co-creatively paving the road towards access to clean and sustainable water in Africa, preliminary acceptance for publication in the Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities Open, Elsevier. [2] X. Zhang, E.S. Lohan, T.R. Arachchige, O. Cramariuc, Measurements analysis for water-access-related applications in LEDSOL transnational project, under preparation.
