Enabling clean and sustainable water through smart UV/LED disinfection and SOLar energy utilization

Energy is a key driver of national development and energy access is crucial to the delivery of fundamental services. Photovoltaics is the most promising renewable energy technology in terms of availability, cost reduction, and efficiency gains. In this context, our project is fostering renewable energy to provide clean and safe drinking water based on photovoltaics -based disinfection. Our system is designed to be packed in a self-powered wearable backpack with a positioning engine. We will organize pilots in Algeria, Togo, and Romania to demonstrate the proposed technology in relevant environments. Our main contributions are in the field of photovoltaics -based water disinfection, flexible solar cells, and low-cost robust positioning algorithms. A multidisciplinary consortium with partners from Algeria, Togo, Romania, Germany and Finland is gathering the needed expertise for the project implementation while fostering close and long-term collaboration between Europe and Africa.