Dyson has announced the UK winner of the Dyson Award, who is in the runnings for the £10k international prize and will be going up against inventions from around the world. Timothy Whitehead will be moving on to the next stage in the annual Dyson Award, an X Factor equivalent for inventors and engineers, only with James Dyson instead of Cheryl Cole.
The Dyson Award UK winner is Timothy Whitehead, who invented a water purification system, which uses UV light to sterilise water. The water purification bottle he’s invented is called Pure, and can purify water in two minutes, rather than the half an hour wait when using chlorine and iodine tablets.
The UK Dyson Award winner works via two chambers. The outer chamber is filled with dirty water, and an inner chamber is pushed through the outer chamber, filtering the water. Once the water is clear of sediment, it is sterilised for 90 seconds using a wind-up ultra violet bulb. It’s not the sort of thing you’d want to go wrong – Tim tested a prototype using sewer water, and luckily it sterilised 99.9% of bacteria and viruses.
Last year’s runner up is now employed by Dyson, and with Dyson doubling his stock of engineers from 350 to 700, it looks like this year’s competition winners could be in with a good chance as well.
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