Coca-Cola, DEKA R&D to bring clean water to Africa, Latin America

Coca-Cola Company and DEKA R&D have entered into a long-term partnership to bring clean water to poor communities across the globe. Beginning in Latin America and Africa, the partners, with support from Inter-American Development Bank and Africare, will take DEKA’s “Slingshot” technology to places without potable water.

The Slingshot water purification system (shown in photo) uses a vapor compression distillation system that runs on low levels of electricity. The system boils and evaporates any dirty water source, and then allows the pure water to condense and be collected. One Slingshot unit can purify up to 300,000 litres of water each year – enough daily drinking water for roughly 300 people – producing 10 gallons of clean water an hour while consuming less than 1 kilowatt of electricity, which is less than the amount of power needed to run a standard handheld hair dryer. The unit can be plugged into the local grid or can be powered by other locally available and renewable power sources such as solar cells, batteries, and DEKA’s Stirling electric generator powered by biogases such as methane from local waste sources.

In 2013, the companies expect to deliver millions of litres of water to schools, clinics and community centres in rural areas in Africa and Latin America. Africare, a leading NGO in Africa, will help them field test Slingshot units in health clinics in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. In Latin America, the partners will be supported by IDB and the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a member of IDB Group. During the first phase of this partnership, the Slingshot technology will be employed in health centers, schools and rural communities where there is an urgent need to complement inadequate water systems in rural communities in Latin America.

In the following years, they will form larger partnerships with development banks and NGOs  in order to broaden their reach to India, the Middle East and Asia. They project to add more than half a billion litres of drinking water per year to the global water supply.