Honourable mention for Lankan students at Junior Water contest in Sweden

Firewood stove water distiller gets teens diplomas, US$ 500:

Wasantha RAMANAYAKE

Three Advanced Level students of Harishchandra National School Negombo received honourable mention at the 2008 International Stockholm Junior Water Prize Contest for their innovative firewood stove water distiller during the World Water Week in Stockholm recently.

The competition was organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). Swedish Crown Princess Victoria awarded the diplomas along with US $ 500 each to Sadun Gayath Sameera Dissanayake, Dasun Thakshala Siriwardane and Sujith Madushan Silva at a ceremony at the Stockholm International Fairs and Conference Center in Stockholm, Sweden.

The wood stove distiller is a modification of the Anagi Uduna a wood stove introduced to improve the efficiency of traditional hearths which uses three stones as a tripod to hold the cooking pots. The three students had further improved the Anagi Uduna to trap the 73 per cent of the heat that was lost to distill water for drinking.

In their official motivation, the Nominating Committee stated that the innovation had provided a relevant solution to the biologically and chemically contaminated drinking water problem prevailant in millions of rural households not only in Sri Lanka but across the world.

Joyce Chai from the United States was awarded The Stockholm Junior Water Prize. She is a student of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Rolling Hills Estates, California, and received a US$ 5,000 scholarship and a crystal sculpture.

She won the prize for discovering the potential toxicity of silver nano particles, which was a new, hardly investigated category of micro pollutants.

The SIWI stated that Silver nano particles are commonly used in industry for a variety of purposes. These particles are then released into the environment, including water bodies, without proper knowledge of their fate and potential toxicity. The remarkable level of scientific research takes steps towards understanding and quantifying the potential environmental consequences and risks of their use.

The project “Restoration of Water Reservoirs Using Latent Phases of Aquatic Organisms, of Alexey Shinkarev, Russian Federation also received honourable mention.

The Stockholm Junior Water Prize is presented each year to high-school age students for outstanding water-related projects that focus on topics of environmental, scientific, social or technological importance. The international honour is given to an individual or group who, like their 30 co-competitors, has been awarded the top prize among national competitions.

The SIWI said that National Country winners travel to Stockholm from countries representing five continents.