Solar steriliser offers hygiene hope for off-grid medicine

Prototypes of the devices, which need no electricity or fuel, were the topic of one of the keynote addresses yesterday September 9, 2013 at the opening of the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Indianapolis.

Naomi Halas, D.Sc., from Rice University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, pointed out that almost two billion people live in areas of the world without a regular supply of electricity. That electricity is key to using autoclaves, which produce steam to sterilise medical and dental instruments. Without that basic machine, doctors must rely on chemicals, which can be costly and difficult to transport, to prevent the spread of germs and disease from medical and dental instruments.

‘We have developed a solution, our solar steam technology,’ Halas said in a statement. ‘It is completely off-grid, uses sunlight as the energy source, is not that large, kills disease-causing microbes effectively and relatively quickly and is easy to operate. This is an incredibly promising technology.’