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Winner
Liquid Lever Solutions
A radical moisture-activated valve designed to help save precious water resources was judged a worthy winner.
The Liquid Lever for hose-fed irrigation of individual trees, shrubs and vines remains open to allow water to flow, but gradually closes as it becomes more wet, stopping the water flow and water wastage. It achieves this through the project partners’ development of a TPE-based bi-stable valve.
Newly created company Liquid Lever Solutions calls its design “a shape-changing polymer valve” which combines “a number of thermoplastic elastomers in a geometry to confine the valve to flipping from a dry open state to a wet closed state”. The company has filed a patent covering its product.
It says its design eliminates features of some existing systems such as timers, solenoid valves, high water towers and water filters.
On a visit to Africa, the company learned that the expansion of agriculture was becoming increasingly unsustainable with up to 60% of water used for irrigation wasted. Additionally the absence of electricity prohibited the use of other modern irrigation systems.
It carried out further investigations in southern Europe, California and Australia and concluded the need for growers in developed countries to also conserve water and electricity and thereby reduce their carbon footprint.
A wish list of attributes for a new type of polymer valve was drawn up with the assistance of the Patent Office and the company’s industry partners: Arkema (polymers), McKechnie Engineered Plastics (overmoulding and co-extrusion) and the Design Enterprise Centre in Hull (rapid prototyping).
With the project workstreams identified, each organisation fed into a series of developments prior to the inventive step of creating the TPE bi-stable valve. The prototypes were manufactured and trialled in the UK to prepare the way for the product launch later this summer, when the Tear Fund will oversee tree planting programmes in Congo, Malawi, Kenya and Nepal.
The award judges acknowledged the “social conscience” that underpinned development of the Liquid Lever.
They were impressed by the transfer of principles of bimetallic components to plastic materials, resulting in an innovative but simple technology.
They also noted the thorough testing of the primary market carried out before product design and development.
Finalists
Lifesaver Systems
Michael Pritchard invented the Lifsaver bottle after seeing victims of the Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina being forced to drink contaminated water. The innovative filter system can remove bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi and other waterborne pathogens without using any chemicals.
It also incorporates the company’s unique Failsafe technology which shuts off the bottle’s cartridge upon expiry, preventing contaminated water from being drunk. The bottle has been tested by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has far exceeded the legal requirements for removal of bacteria and viruses from a contaminated water source.
Each bottle can produce up to 6,000 litres of sterile drinking water. The company said a Boeing C-17 transport plane can transport enough bottles to provide 500,000 people with drinking water for up to 16 months.
Partners in the design and development were E3Design and Omega Plastics. These two companies worked very closely with Lifesaver Systems on design, tooling, materials trials and “a huge amount of fine tuning”, they said.
Owen Mumford
The Humira Pen is a new delivery device for Abbott’s Humira drug, one of the TNF inhibitors used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. The device is based the sub-assemblies of a reusable autoinjector platform manufactured by Owen Mumford.
The pen is single-dose device, with a concealed needle. The patient presses the pen against the skin, presses the button and allows the medicine to be delivered.
Other features of the device include: a safety cap to prevent misfiring of the autoinjector; window in syringe housing to view product in pre-filled syringe; yellow band on firing mechanism plunger to indicate complete injection; and a lock-out shroud to help prevent needlestick injury.
According to Abbott, results from a study showed 9 out of 10 rheumatoid arthritis patients preferred the Humira Pen for convenience and ease of use compared with a pre-filled syringe. Eight out of 10 patients considered the pen to be less painful.
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