Our device uses Cold Plasma to remove persistent organic pollutants from drinking water, Ukraine has some of the most contaminated drinking water in Europe. This project contributes to our understanding of the specific market we have targeted within Ukraine to be sure that deployment of a demonstrator scale device into a specific customer will provide us with the data we need to show that our device is efficient and competitive. The project contributes to the 2030 UN sustainable development agenda, specifically to SDG6 "Clean water and sanitation" that aims at providing universal and equitable access to clean drinking water affordable for all. The proposal focuses on clean drinking water supply in Ukraine, a lower middle-income ODA eligible country. We will select a demonstrator site to test the efficacy and efficiency of the innovative "cold plasma" technology for water treatment before bringing it to serial production. Ukraine has the scarcest fresh water resources in Europe, with the quality of drinking water rapidly deteriorating due to intensive agriculture, poor industrial wastewater treatment, obsolete water treatment facilities and lack of state control and support over the water quality. 30% of its 42-mln population live in rural and suburban environment without any water treatment facilities. They are chronically exposed to drinking water of poor quality affecting their health. Deployment of our device, developed in country, will improve lives locally and if effective will be a game changing invention for off grid water treatment.

The project contributes to the UN sustainable development agenda, specifically to the SDG6 that aims at providing universal access to clean water and sanitation, which affects poverty, health and economic growth in all DAC countries. It focuses on Ukraine with its 42-mln population, where 30% of people live in a rural environment and have no access to good quality drinking water. The proposal is aimed at proving the feasibility of a novel and original technology of water treatment and providing clean water to the communities, which have no centralised water supply system. Without strict pollution control, the surface water of the rivers, the main source of drinking water, is polluted with dangerous organic chemicals and other contaminants. Small communities cannot afford the water treatment systems used by urban residents because they are expensive to install and run. They get practically no support from the government. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Ukraine has chronic fresh water shortage, occupying the 111th place among 152 countries by the amount of renewable surface water per capita. The proposed technology is based on physical rather than chemical principles; it does not need expensive chemicals and does not generate waste being environmentally neutral. The processes employed in this technology use energy concentrated in small air bubbles where the complete destruction of organic contaminants occurs, keeping the energy consumption and running costs lower than in alternative processes. Its implementation will have significant socioeconomic impact on ordinary people improving their quality of life by installing affordable water treatment equipment and solving the problem of clean water supply. This is particularly important for children and young mothers who are the most vulnerable members of the society prone to multiple negative effects of water contamination. The team will spread the information and knowledge in the communities about the dangers of drinking contaminated water and raise awareness of the magnitude of this problem among the decision makers and other stakeholders. We expect to install 10 units as the first batch in rural communities of the industrial Dnipropetrivs'k region, which suffers particularly heavily from the shortage of water even in comparison with the rest of the country. It will secure clean water for at least 12-13,000 people, at schools and hospitals, and we will increase it 10-fold by the end of Phase 2, helping Ukraine to achieve the targets of the UN SDG6: clean water and sanitation by 2030.