SBIR Phase I: Affordable point-of-use water disinfection through mass-produced nano-silver embedded paper filters

The proposed broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is the reduction of waterborne disease from drinking water in low-income populations. 2.1 billion people drink fecally-contaminated water, 50% of hospitalization in developing countries are due to waterborne diseases, and contaminated drinking water causes >500,000 diarrheal deaths each year. Low-income populations not only pay for water, but pay anywhere from 30% to 10 times more in absolute terms than the wealthy. This proposed technical innovation will provide: a consumer packaged goods water filter, i.e. a product priced as a consumable and sold through food/beverage retail grocery stores. This is a different business model than water filters which are sold as durable good appliances through specialty stores. If successful a new consumer water filter category reaching a fraction of 2.1 B people has potential to represent a $1B+ category. This proposed project would bring the innovation closer to commercialization by creating a more robust performing antimicrobial filter paper through challenge water stress testing. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a nano-silver antimicrobial filter paper through mass-production methods, e.g. paper machines, that is formulated to be biocidal in a wide variety of water sources. Technical hurdles include the reliability of technology scaling, developing frameworks for quality and stress testing, broader antimicrobial efficacy, and longer use life. The project goals include engineering a paper formulation with increased silver uptake, more uniform nanoparticle synthesis, synergistic antimicrobial chemicals, and reliable filter paper pore size and flow rate. The project plan to address these technical challenges include rigorous stress testing with specific challenge chemicals and high microbial loads, development of new formulations based on adding synergistic antimicrobial chemicals, absorbent chemicals to increase silver uptake, and process variations in the operation of the paper machine (speed, temperature, pressing, etc). These experiments will require new formulations to be evaluated following the same quality and stress tests with each iteration at the bench scale and pilot scale. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.