Funding for Water Purification

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Funding for Water Purification

Chief Executive Officer of HMSolution was awarded $50,000 by the Slater Technology Fund for water purification. 

Margaret Lengerich built her water purification technology company HMSolution out of the research she did while she was a graduate student in the Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship master’s program at Brown.

download (17).pngThe Slater Technology Fund is an independently chartered economic development fund that focuses its venture capital investments on businesses based in Rhode Island.

HMSolution is a water treatment technology company that sells water purification systems that remove arsenic and 15 other toxic contaminants from drinking water.

The systems use iron-based absorption technology to remove arsenic from water.

309234-3c2e2734f29a5be0c8c4e1e9473da417-medium_jpg.pngThe system differs from its competitors in that it does not use chemicals in the purification process, does not require changing filters often and costs less.

The technology is capable of reducing concentrations of arsenic from 200 parts per billion — a toxic level — to undetectable levels.

The World Health Organization reported in 2014 that 200 million people within 70 countries are ingesting an unsafe level of arsenic. Ingesting arsenic can result in cancer, skin lesions, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity, diabetes and developmental delays, the WHO also reported.

Arsenic is ingested mainly through drinking contaminated water, eating crops that are grown through contaminated irrigation systems and preparing food with contaminated water.

Latin America is the company’s primary focus in the short term, Lengerich said. “In the north of Chile and Argentina, they have very high concentrations of arsenic. Those are the areas where I would like to bring the technology,” she said. Often the areas hardest hit by this problem are in rural, poor communities that cannot afford access to safe water, she added.

HMSolution aims to sell to community water systems, beverage companies, agricultural companies and households. “Every day there are companies in Chile that want (this product) to be installed,” Lengerich said.

Source: The Brown Daily Herald

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