Ultrafiltration membrane

These palm sized membranes costing 2.5 USD each, can be used to develop hand pump based water filtration kits. These are some features of the water treatment possible with this membrane.

• Turbidity Challenge: <0.18 NTU after challenge water containing 2, 5, and 10 NTU
• Cryptosporidium Removal: 9 log removal using surrogate test procedure 99.9999999%
• E.Coli/Bacteria Removal: 6 log removal of E. coli 99.9999%
• Virus Removal: 5 log removal

They are one of the cheapest water filtration membranes available in market, these filters are commonly used in consumer household units by companies like Eureka Forbes, Kent and others consumer brands. The complete household filtration kit bought from store can be more than 100 USD, and are not designed to be portable or easy to carry. Usually, these household appliances are electrically powered, further increasing the capital and operating cost of the unit.

Hence, handheld knapsack sprayers, and other off-the-shelf hand sprayers can be coupled with the UF membrane to make your own Drinking Water Filtration Membrane. In India, communities living in urban settlements have to rely on drinking water service from vendors, who have unreliable supply, and mostly unavailable during floods, cyclones and other emergencies due to limited operational bandwidth.

Hence, these hand-powered units can be used to push water through the filter. You can also choose to put these membranes on electrical knapsack sprayers for using battery to push water through the filtration process.