Very small holes (pores) in a membrane let the water through while the membrane traps the contaminants in the water (bacteria, cysts, protozoa). Because the contaminants are bigger than the holes, they can’t pass through the membrane. This process is called “size exclusion”.
Our technology allows you to take any non-salt water, pour it through our purification cartridge and drink it.
No chemicals, no electricity, no added water pressure nor back flushing required. When the cartridge’s purification capacity is exhausted it simply stops flowing – so there is no risk of accidentally drinking contaminated water. No other means of purifying water works this simply, reliably and safely. Moreover, we can manufacture our purification cartridges at a price affordable for nearly everyone on the planet. This means that millions of people for the first time will be able to afford to control the quality of the water they drink. They will not have to rely on governments, utilities, or be forced to make the choice between ingesting chemicals or drinking unsafe water.
This size exclusion mechanism has been used for over 40 years in the pharmaceutical industry to purify water for drug manufacturing. However, the old technology membranes used in this process required huge water pressure to work. Thanks to Liquidity we can apply this proven purification technique to gravity-fed consumer water purification devices for the first time.
Electro-spun extremely fine nanofibers form a dense 3D mesh that creates many small pores resulting in a lot of open area that allows water to flow through. You can see how much more open area our membranes have compared to traditional membranes used for pharmaceutical manufacturing purification.
Electrospinning is a technique for creating very fine, nanometer-scale, fibers from a liquid. A high voltage is applied to a polymer solution and a collector plate. This creates an electrical field that pulls the solution out of a syringe. As the solution is pulled downwards it becomes thinner and thinner. Eventually the air resistance causes the extremely fine fiber to spin and swirl resulting in a dense mesh or mat of fiber building up. With this technique we can essentially print our membrane material making it extremely economical to produce and easy to scale up.
Liquidity’s purification cartridges will eliminate bacteria, cysts, and protozoa to a 6 log reduction and virus to 4 log reduction. That means 99.9999% bacteria and 99.99% of viruses in the water are eliminated. That meets or exceeds the US EPA standards for safe drinking water. Microbes removed include:
Liquidity’s purification technology uses two separate microfilters. The first nanofiber membrane traps bacteria, while the second traps even smaller viruses.
We do not supply products to the general public. We work with consumer product manufacturers, NGOs and philanthropic organizations around the globe to create life saving water purification products.
We work with you to either upgrade existing purification devices and product platforms or to create new simpler, higher performance devices using our purification cartridge. This will help you capture new customers and to allow follow-on service and sales for existing customers.
We need your help to reach the millions that can benefit from our products. We are actively looking for partners to help us develop and distribute our technology to consumers at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. If your organization is active in water, sanitation, or global health we would like to hear from you.