Assessment of a low-cost, point-of-use, ultraviolet water disinfection technology.

We describe a point-of-use (POU) ultraviolet (UV) disinfection technology, the UV Tube, which can be made with locally available resources around the world for under $50 US. Laboratory and field studies were conducted to characterize the UV Tube's performance when treating a flowrate of 5 L/min. A small field study in two rural communities in Baja California Sur demonstrated that the UV Tube reduced E. coli concentrations to less than 1/100 ml in 65 out of 70 samples. The results demonstrate that the UV Tube is a promising technology for treating household drinking water at the point of use. Journal of Water and Health. 2008;6(1):53–65.