Hasta La Ideas

The Solvatten water purification device won first prize in this year’s Swedish Skapa awards and boosted inventor Petra Wadström’s bank account with a cool SEK 400,000 (about USD 50,000). The invention is a water purifier where the sun’s heat and UV radiation does most of the cleaning work. A filter on the tap does the rest. After sitting out in the sun for three to four hours, the device can deliver ten liters of clean, drinkable (and hot) water. Anything that can help fix the lack of drinkable water in the world gets our support. However, as good as it may be, the Solvatten is not the first of it’s kind. We have covered three similar ideas before, the latest one only last August. Then, designers Alberto Meda and Francisco Gomez Paz won first prize in the Home category in the Index:2007 design competition with their very similar (but better looking) concept, the Solar Bottle. In March of 2006 we also presented two other, and much simpler and cheaper, solutions using the same principle. Petra Wadström’s Solvatten, however, seems to be much nearer actual production than the Solar Bottle. The two other ideas are already in use, we think.brbr