Wollongong research project achieves best ever Australian result at Energy Globe Award

Nov 19, 2003

A University of Wollongong research project, "Solar Powered Desalination System for Remote Communities", has won the second prize at the Energy Globe Award for the Category Water in Linz, Austria.

University of Wollongong Environmental Engineering senior lecturer and project leader, Dr Andrea Schäfer, UOW first year engineering students Matt Daly and Wes McCombe, as well as the Project Partner Dr Bryce Richards from Photovoltaics Engineering at the University of New South Wales, travelled to the TV gala in Linz to receive the prize.

The project was selected from about 1,000 projects from 95 counties. The prize is the highest rank achieved by an Australian research team.Dr Schäfer has combined her membrane expertise with her partner Dr Bryce Richards' experience with solar power to create a sustainable system that requires only some sort of water. The system is designed to remove bacteria, pathogens, trace contaminants such as arsenic, salinity and other contaminants to provide safe drinking water.

Dr Schäfer said the system had clear benefits for developing countries where contaminated drinking water was a major cause of illness and death in the nation's poorest countries as well as Australia's remote communities where availability of clean water could be a challenge.

Team members said: "It is our dream to create a sustainable engineering solution and we dedicate the prize to the millions of children who have died, or will die, due to lack of access to clean water."

"It could also be used by Australia's drought-stricken farmers to desalinate ground water," Dr Richards said "and in many water-limited regions there is no access to power which makes our system a strong option". The system had been tested in White Cliffs, NSW, last year.

Dr Schäfer said she and Dr Richards were finalising arrangements with an industry partner to commercialise the system and make it available to the world.

"A major challenge will be to convince people that a few hundred lives in developing countries are worth more than having a second family car in the developed world -- which is about the amount of money such a system will cost," according to team members.

The team paid tribute to Austrian Airlines (Lauda Air), the UOW Faculty of Engineering, the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Margaret Sheil and the UOW Student Representative Council and UNSW Faculty of Engineering for their sponsorship assistance.