PML receives Grand Challenges Exploration funding
7 November 2011
PML announced today that it will
receive funding through Grand Challenges Explorations, an
initiative created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that
enables researchers worldwide to test unorthodox ideas that address
persistent health and development challenges. Principal
Investigator, Dr Mike Allen will pursue an innovative global health
research project, titled:
“Vortex bioreactors for the
processing of faecal sludge and waste water".
Grand Challenges Explorations funds
scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can
break the mold in how we solve
persistent global health and development challenges. Dr Allen’s
project is one of 110 Grand Challenges Explorations grants
announced today.
“We believe in the power of
innovation—that a single bold idea can pioneer solutions to our
greatest
health and development challenges,”
said Chris Wilson, Director of Global Health Discovery for the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation. “Grand Challenges Explorations
seeks to identify and fund these new ideas wherever they come from,
allowing scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs to pursue the
kinds of creative ideas and novel approaches that could help to
accelerate the end of polio, cure HIV infection or improve
sanitation.” Projects that are receiving funding show promise in
tackling priority global health issues where solutions do not yet
exist. This includes finding effective methods to eliminate or
control infectious diseases such as polio and HIV as well as
discovering new sanitation technologies.
To learn more about Grand Challenges
Explorations, visit www.grandchallenges.org.
The project aims to develop a
low-cost, manually driven vortex bioreactor which reduces the total
viable
count of faecal contaminated waste
water and then separates it into two output streams – liquids
and
solids. At the same time the
activity/viability of pathogenic organisms in both fractions is
reduced by
continuous, in situ treatment
with a low-cost formulation of biological and chemical agents.
Industrial
scale, electrically driven, voraxial
separators are commonly used in many applications from the oil
industry to the food industry, the aim
of this project is to produce a scaled down version that can be
hand- or bicycle-driven for use in developing communities.
Dr Allen said: “We believe that this
system could increase the number of ‘pits’ emptied per day; be
operated by one person; allow the
processing of wastewater/effluent with both a low and high
percentage concentration of solids and
efficiently facilitate the treatment of the contaminated material
for safe local discharge or recycling”.