An inspiring piece of product design has come out of Loughborough University – a new drinking water sterilisation device that uses UV light to eliminate bacteria. The design was dreamt up by Timothy Whitehead, and has won the UK heat of the Dyson Award.
The new product sterilises water in just 90 seconds, much quicker than the 30 minutes that traditional chlorine and iodine tablets take – and without leaving a nasty taste.
As Timothy says: ‘I began to experiment with using ultraviolet light to sterilise water quickly, without any distortion to taste.’
Attaining clean drinking water is a very big issue in the developing world and in disaster situations where clean drinking water is very hard to come by. The design will be going up against international heat finalists for the main award – who wins will be decided by Dyson engineers, international judges and James Dyson himself.




