Advanced cold plasma technology for the removal of persistent organic pollutants from fresh water

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The project contributes to the UN sustainable development agenda, specifically to the SDG6 that aims at providing universal access to clean water and sanitation, which affects poverty, health and economic growth in all DAC countries. It focuses on Ukraine with its 42-mln population, where 30% of people live in a rural environment and have no access to good quality drinking water.The proposal is aimed at proving the feasibility of a novel and original technology of water treatment and providing clean water to the communities, which have no centralised water supply system. Without strict pollution control, the surface water of the rivers, the main source of drinking water, is polluted with dangerous organic chemicals and other contaminants. Small communities cannot afford the water treatment systems used by urban residents because they are expensive to install and run. They get practically no support from the government. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Ukraine has chronic fresh water shortage, occupying the 111th place among 152 countries by the amount of renewable surface water per capita. The proposed technology is based on physical rather than chemical principles; it does not need expensive chemicals and does not generate waste being environmentally neutral. The processes employed in this technology use energy concentrated in small air bubbles where the complete destruction of organic contaminants occurs, keeping the energy consumption and running costs lower than in alternative processes. Its implementation will have significant socioeconomic impact on ordinary people improving their quality of life by installing affordable water treatment equipment and solving the problem of clean water supply. This is particularly important for children and young mothers who are the most vulnerable members of the society prone to multiple negative effects of water contamination. The team will spread the information and knowledge in the communities about the dangers of drinking contaminated water and raise awareness of the magnitude of this problem among the decision makers and other stakeholders. We expect to install 10 units as the first batch in rural communities of the industrial Dnipropetrivs'k region, which suffers particularly heavily from the shortage of water even in comparison with the rest of the country. It will secure clean water for at least 12-13,000 people, at schools and hospitals, and we will increase it 10-fold by the end of Phase 2, helping Ukraine to achieve the targets of the UN SDG6: clean water and sanitation by 2030.