As Water Technology Leader at BOSAQ, I’m responsible for the water treatment process design, pilot testing and commissioning of new water purification products. In an expert role, I guide the team in the selection and design of best-in-class water treatment technologies and applying these according to the needs of customers. I work closely with the R&D department to evaluate practical applicability of promising R&D developments, with the goal of implementing these developments into new BOSAQ products. Furthermore, I closely cooperate with the field commissioning and operation team to take their valuable feedback back to the process design table, enabling continuous product improvement.
Water disinfection is essential to obtain water that is microbiologically safe to drink. This entails water that is free of harmful pathogens that could induce severe health effects such as diarrhea and worse.
Several types of disinfection techniques have been developed and are being used today. UV disinfection is a technique that allows for water disinfection by killing harmful bacteria/viruses without running the risk of producing potentially harmful disinfection by-products.
The UV light spectrum is defined as light with a wavelength of 100-400 nanometer. Interestingly, the wavelength at which DNA/RNA of microorganisms maximally absorbs UV light is 265 nanometer. This UV wavelength causes damage to the DNA/RNA structure of the microorganisms, turning them incapable of replicating. Hence, UV disinfection technology is based on UV lamps that emit UV light as close as possible to the peak wavelength of 265 nanometer to obtain maximum inactivation of pathogens.
BOSAQ produces safe drinking water on the most remote locations in the world, IoT controlled, and without the need of the inhabitants to operate or manipulate the system.
Conventional UV technology makes use of low-pressure mercury lamps. Mercury is a toxic substance when released to the environment and potentially harmful to the people that need to manipulate these lamps. BOSAQ is always on the search to integrate robust, sustainable and low maintenance technology, hence our choice for LED-UV lamps. LED-UV technology doesn’t make use of mercury in the lamps, requires less maintenance compared to conventional UV technology and allows easier operation control as they can be turned on/off without the need to respect a warm-up time.
