A team of students from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mechanical Engineering in Australia have created a water purification system that needs just a glass tube and an empty bag of potato chips to work.
Harrison Evans, Anthony Lieu, Mark Padovan and Michael Watchman created half a cylinder out of the reflective metal on chip packets and attached it to a glass tube a meter-and-a-half long to perfect their design, which uses ultra violet rays to generate oxygen.
The reflective material directs the light from the sun to the water flowing through the tube.
The sun-generated oxygen then kills pathogens in the water.
Once attached to a water system, it could purify water much more quickly than any current tool available.
It will be tested out in Papau New Guinea, where 900 children are killed every year from drinking polluted water.
The long-term goal is to have a design that doesn’t require overseas intervention to be built.
Organizations in Brazil, the Philippines and Thailand have expressed interest in the project as well.
This is just one of many potentially life-saving projects the team is working on.
Other designs include wind generators made from scrap for those without electricity and stoves that could eliminate harmful gas emissions from burnt wood.
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