WhatFinger


Israeli startup repurposes discarded kidney dialysis filters to make pure water in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Ingenious upcycling turns discarded medical device into water filter



NUFiltration’s water recycling technology for greenhouses. Photo courtesy of NUFiltration Every year across the world, more than 250 million dialysis filters are thrown away after only a single use cleansing a kidney patient’s blood of toxins. What if those filters could be recycled for a new use, wondered Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine Prof. Yoram Lass. Could a medical filter that can remove even the slightest unwanted particle from human blood also work for, say, water purification?
Lass, whose specialty is in hemodynamics (the dynamics of blood flow) developed a novel patent for cleaning water using dialysis filters. Not only would the quality far surpass existing industrial purification systems, but the raw materials – those millions of discarded filters piling up in landfills – were essentially free for the cost of pick-up and delivery. Lass is a physician, not a businessman. But Israeli entrepreneur Mino Negrin knew a thing or two about water. In 2010, he sold Nirosoft, the Italian-Israeli company he created with his father to build water softening and desalination systems, to Ronald Lauder’s RWL Water Group. The deal was lucrative enough that, at age 48, Negrin began taking courses in philosophy and Jewish thought at Hebrew University, anticipating a long and pleasant retirement. It didn’t last long. “One day in 2011, I received a call from Prof. Lass,” Negrin tells ISRAEL21c. “He said to me, ‘I heard you’re successful in this field of membrane separation.’” That was the technology Negrin had developed for Nirosoft. “I’ve got this patent,” Lass continued. “Would you like to see it?” Negrin did and, as he puts it, “It was genius. The simplicity of it caught my eye immediately. It could filter out every micro-biological pollutant: viruses, bacteria, fungi.” -- More....



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