News
Thermofluidics takes delivery of controller hardware for our new fully automatic PV-electrolytic chlorinator for off-grid communities
May, 2022
Professor Dan Rogers, key member of Oxford University’s Energy and Power group and Thermofluidics’ power-electronics guru, has handed over a prototype controller for our fully-automated PV-powered water chlorinator. The controller, built around a STM32 microcontroller, will integrate the key components that enable us to offer fully-automated water chlorination for communities without access to water or power-grids.
Chlorination is by far the most common water treatment method worldwide, and the only method providing residual protection against microbial contamination post-source. This is increasingly understood to be as significant as contamination at source, particularly when water is collected in buckets and carried to the home. However, its implementation is currently hindered by limited supply chains for chemical feedstocks, dependence on skilled operators, and routine maintenance requirements.
We will enable automated water treatment to internationally-recognised standards by PV-powered electrolysis, without depending on free-chlorine chemicals such as hypochlorites or chlorinated cyanuric-acids, skilled operators, or expensive and life-limiting components such as RedOx (ORP) and Ph probes. Using a novel approach, we are able to treat many groundwater sources that contain trace levels of natural chlorides without any feedstock materials at all, including common salt. This will result in a practical and cost effective solution to delivering water free from microbial contaminants at a community level off-grid. Later in the project, we plan to integrate an accessory that will enable sources with insufficient natural chlorides to be automatically treated, without batch preparation or operator intervention, using widely-available crystalline salt.
The components of our chlorinator, already working well together with manual control, have since been integrated and controlled by a lab PC using National Instruments’ Labview. The move over to a purpose-built controller represents a major step in our drive to bring affordable water services to all.
