Elizabeth Korolo Boluwatife and Abdulsalam Ajara, two Nigerian students, are blazing a trail with a system they designed intended at purifying and recycling dirty water, providing safe drinking water for residents in riverine and rural areas. They received the Stockholm Junior Water Prize Nigeria lately for developing the Bithermal Water Distillation Device.
The jury panel selected Boluwatife and Ajara’s Bithermal Water Distillation Device as the best project. It was praised for its capacity to offer everyone with safe drinking water, as well as its cost-effectiveness, economic viability, practicability, and scalability.
This ingenious technology purifies water using sun energy, which is abundant in tropical locations. The scarcity of safe drinking water in their village in Lagos state’s Makoko district led Boluwatife and Ajara to create this remedy.
Ajara stated that she had an epiphany while boiling water in the kitchen. She discovered that the process of water evaporating from the pot and condensing on the cover might be utilized to purify water because evaporated water is the cleanest form of water, also known as distilled water. This realization generated the concept for their novel water filtration system.
Boluwatife, who grew up in the Makoko area, explained that despite being surrounded by water, the community lacks access to clean water due to inadequate drainage and sewage systems, worsening the problem.
The gadget is made from locally available materials including sand, charcoal, and fiber. The BBC video below demonstrates how it works:
