Deadline: 31-May-23
Applications are now open for the Oman Humanitarian Desalination Challenge (OHDC) Prize Competition led by MEDRC and supported by the Oman Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MoHERI).
The OHDC Prize Competition seeks to create a hand-held, stand-alone, low-cost, desalination device for short-term use and rapid deployment following a humanitarian crises.
Access to clean fresh drinking water following a disaster is critical to health and survival. Current relief response measures often rely on transporting massive quantities of bottled water into the affected population or distributing water purification devices or tablets that don’t have the ability to rid water of salt.
There is an urgent need for an inexpensive hand-held desalination device that can be deployed quickly and affordably to people in need of drinking water in times of crises. No such product exists on the marketplace today.
Benefits
- The OHDC Prize Competition carries a $700,000 prize. Launched March 7, 2018, the OHDC Prize Competition is starting its third competition with no winner from the previous two.
What they’re looking for?
- Low Cost: The estimated production cost of the device will be $20.
- Robust: The device should be resilient, corrosion resistant, operate through pictorial instructions, have a long shelf-life, and should minimize the use of parts that could be lost.
- Short-term use: The device will operate for a minimum of 30 days.
- Handheld-size: The device will be hand-held and easily transportable.
- Rate of production: Device will produce a minimum of 3 liters of purified water per day, including cloudy days.
- Stand-alone: There will be no addition of chemicals, fuel, or other external materials, other than the seawater to be purified.
- Quality: Device will purify 100 NTU, 35,000 mg/L seawater to 1000 mg/L TDS and meet WHO maximum contaminant levels.
Eligibility Criteria
- The OHDC Prize Competition is open to any individual, team, or organization from across the world who believes they have a solution capable of meeting this need.
For more information, visit Oman Humanitarian Desalination Challenge.