For the 16 percent of the Peninsula’s 4 million people living in rural settlements, fresh water and electricity cannot be taken for granted.
An engineering student at UADY may have invented a solution, reports CGTN’s Alasdair Baverstock.
“When it rains, the dirt roads here become impossible. We can be left with no clean water for many days,” explained a villager named Rosa. “Water from the well is bad, and many of us get sick from drinking it. But we have no choice.”
If only the well water could be purified. An electric purifier would be expensive, and demand on an unreliable power supply.
Jonathan Gual’s proposed solution is a water purifier that harnesses the region’s 4.5 kilowatt-hours of daily sunlight.
“Water quality is equal to quality of life, and the life these people lead is entirely alien to existence in urban areas,” Gual said, in Spanish. “Seeing that such basic problems remain an issue in parts of my state made me very motivated to help.”
Sunlight evaporates and condenses water on a slanted glass roof, and then runs off, purified, into a storage tank.
The machine can produce six liters of purified water a day, enough for a family of three. Gual’s purifier remains in its prototype stage, but he hopes it will soon see full-scale production.
Read more, and watch a corresponding video at the China Global Television Network
