Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
21
Point-of-Drinking Water Puriication
Innovation
: The Water Initiative
Eugene A. Fitzgerald, Thomas A. Langdo, Kevin M. McGovern, and Rick Renjilian
The Water Initiative, New York, New York, USA
CONTENTS
21.1 Background and Landscape ............................................................................................. 419
21.2 TWI Formation and Early Innovation Iteration ............................................................. 421
21.3 Three D's ............................................................................................................................. 422
21.3.1 Market Application ................................................................................................ 422
21.3.2 Technology .............................................................................................................. 423
21.3.3 Business Factors ..................................................................................................... 426
21.3.4 Converging on 3-D ................................................................................................ 426
21.3.5 Limitations for TWI 1.0 ......................................................................................... 427
21.3.6 Lessons from BoP................................................................................................... 427
21.4 Scaling with TWI 2.0 ......................................................................................................... 428
21.5 TWI: Continuous Innovation ........................................................................................... 430
21.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 431
Reference ...................................................................................................................................... 431
21.1 Background and Landscape
The Water Initiative (TWI) was founded in 2006 to bring new innovations in point-of-
drinking (POD) water puriication to the marketplace. In this chapter, we describe the TWI
vision and innovation process that has led to a new approach to POD water puriication.
The water industry landscape is generally composed of what TWI refers to as “big
water” and “the last mile of water.” Big water is composed of centralized technologies
and business models, such as large regional water treatment plants. Examples would be
centralized municipal water plants in developed countries, and centralized desalination
plants in countries that lack suficient freshwater sources. The last mile of water is com-
posed of water puriication systems that are closest to the end user, such as point-of-entry
water puriication systems (i.e., at the point-of-entry to a house or building in which all
water is puriied at that point) down to POD devices in which the water is puriied very
close to the user's lips (e.g., in the kitchen). Further examples in this category are whole-
house treatment water systems in developed countries where public municipal treatment
is not present, as well as consumer devices like pitcher-based products that improve the
taste (palatability) of water. We call this category point of drinking or POD.
Innovation in the water puriication landscape has been incremental. We deine inno-
vation as the useful embodiment of an idea in the marketplace, and so such a deinition
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