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Finnish solution helps purify water for Kenyan community
Finnish company Solar Water Solutions and humanitarian aid organisation World Vision have launched a new solar-powered solution in Tseikuru, Kitui County, Kenya, that provides the local community with clean drinking water.
The fully solar-powered water purification unit provides some 710 people, including 410 children, with safe drinking water from a saline borehole.
The solution is based on an innovative solar-powered reverse osmosis system that can produce pure water without any chemicals or emissions from seawater, lakes, rivers and saline water.
“Reverse osmosis typically requires much energy. Solar Water Solutions comes in to provide a technological solution to solve this energy challenge,” said Antti Pohjola, CEO of Solar Water Solutions. “Our solution makes it possible to supply safe water to people living in remote areas without electricity coverage.”
A hot and dry climate with unreliable rainfall makes water a scarce resource in the Kitui County, especially in Tseikuru, which has meant that the local community has had to fetch water over long distances.
With the installed SolarRO unit, the community now has access to clean drinking water from a drilled well at a rate of 1 000 litres per hour and, on average, 8 000 litres per day. The system can also be easily switched to an electrical grid or generator during non-solar hours.
The project also includes close collaboration with the county government and Epicenter Africa, a Kenyan solutions provider for water and renewable energy projects, to ensure that the water project is sustained.
Explore how a cleantech company from Espoo, Finland, set out to tackle the world’s clean water scarcity problem in our feature article.