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TECHNOLOGYSPOTLIGHT

Advances in technology across industry

New Danish invention cleans water with sunlight

Two Danish students have developed ‘SolarSack’ for inexpensive and environmentally friendly water purification. The concept was tested in villages, refugee camps and slums in East Africa where it will be marketed.

Anders Løcke and Louise Ullmann, who study Architecture and Design at Aalborg University (AAU), have designed a better and cheaper system for purifying drinking water in developing countries.

SolarSack is a special bag that is filled with four litres of water and placed in the sun for four hours. Using UVA and UVB rays, as well as heat from the sun, the water is cleaned of pathogenic bacteria. The user can then drink the water and reuse the bag for water purification.

The method was approved by the World Health Organization which estimates that between 99.9 and 99.999% of the pathogenic bacteria in the water die. The students tested SolarSack in Kenya and Uganda with local users and organisations, and adapted it to their needs. And it’s cheap.

“We estimate that a SolarSack can be produced for less than one and a half Danish kroner, transported and end up in the hands of the user for less than a dollar. The bag can be reused 150 times, making it significantly cheaper than the alternatives,” says Louise Ullmann, AAU. Visit: www.aau.dk

Land scarcity has severely limited Singaporeís adoption of solar power. Floating solar panels may be a viable alternative for the city-state surrounded by water. Floating panels could be eleven percent more efficient than solar panels placed on precious land. Pioneering technology leader ABB is providing critical components on a landmark one megawatt floating solar photovoltaic test-bed. It measures 1 hectare or 1.5 football fields. The energy generated will be fed into the national energy grid, providing electricity for up to 250 households.

“We are proud to support this important project in Singapore with our technological expertise and domain knowledge,” said Tarak Mehta, president of ABB’s Electrification Products division. “This project is perfectly aligned with our Next Level strategy around the energy revolution and is an important step in collaborating with partners to bring more renewables into the future energy mix.”

Located in the Tengeh Reservoir in west Singapore, the installation features multiple solar solutions from providers to study the performance and cost-effectiveness of floating solar platforms. ABB supplied 100kW of market-leading TRIO-50 solar inverters to Phoenix Solar, one of several system integrators for the project. These essential components convert the direct current produced in solar panels into alternating current for use in electrical grids. Additionally, ABB low-voltage molded case and miniature circuit breakers protect the electrical circuits on the water. Visit: www.abb.com Since 19 November urban mobility in the French city of Brest has been boosted by two cable cars carrying up to 60 people who travel more than 400 metres above the River Penfeld, with a power consumption that is potentially close to zero. Supported by Leroy-Somer, the companies Bartholet France and Seirel are behind this achievement which is a world first in terms of technology.

One of the challenges posed by Brest Métropole involved implementing a solution with low power consumption. The idea was therefore to recover the braking energy, but the energy operators have not yet systematically developed the full potential for reinjection of current into their network. The solution therefore consisted in storing energy in super capacity batteries when the cable cars are descending, in order to then reuse this energy for the subsequent ascent.

A DC converter from the Leroy-Somer range enables management of the operations for the M65V385F supercapacitors developed by Blue Solutions (Bolloré Group). The supercapacitors have been specially designed to meet the needs of industrial applications requiring high power ratings. Meeting the most demanding functional specifications, they charge and discharge in just a few seconds and provide service lives of several hundred thousand cycles. Visit: www.nidec.com

ABB drives the energy revolution with solar power in Singapore