OTTAWA — Hundreds of thousands of people in earthquake-ravaged Haiti will soon have clean drinking water thanks to the Canadian military and some Ottawa-born technology.
Along with food and medical supplies, Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) is carrying water-filtration equipment produced by Seprotech Systems Inc.
The DART's reverse osmosis water purification units, which are about the size of an industrial garbage container, are each capable of producing as much as 5,000 litres of potable water daily.
According to Seprotech, together the three units can provide between two and five litres of drinking water a day for up to 150,000 people. The machines take less than 20 minutes to set up and can draw water straight from the ocean and convert it.
The units use several levels of filtration to scrub water clean for drinking purposes. Dirty water is pumped into the machine where numerous filters pull out any floating debris. The water is then passed through a reverse-osmosis membrane, which pulls out any other particles or bacteria that may be left in the water. As a final safeguard, chlorine is added to kill any viruses or bacteria that may have made it through the filtration process.
Martin Hauschild, president and chief executive of Seprotech, said each of the units cost the Canadian military between $600,000 and $700,000. In recent years the units have been deployed in Afghanistan, the First Nations community of Kashechewan in northern Ontario, the Philippines and other disaster-stricken areas, providing water for millions of people.
Seprotech, founded in 1985, is headquartered in Ottawa and makes equipment to filter municipal water supplies and help municipalities deal with waste-water filtration.
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