Prague, Aug 16 (CTK) – Slovak-born Pavol Floris, 66, living in Prague, has invented a wind-powered mobile pump that is used not only in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but also in Ghana and Mongolia and soon it will be sold to India, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes yesterday.
Floris was awarded the “environmental Oscar” from the E.ON firm for his pump last year, thanks to which the number of his customers doubled. Besides, he was decorated by the Business Platform for Foreign Development Cooperation and entered the Oxford Encyclopedia of interesting personalities, LN writes.
Floris started working on his pump 15 years ago. He was motivated by the lack of drinking water and its poor quality as well as rising prices. Along with the pump, bearing his name, he invented a water treatment technology that can remove 99.9 percent of viruses and bacteria from water, he said.
His pump is able to bring water to the areas where some water drills or wells exist, but they are not used and water inside may be contaminated. His pump cleans the water first mechanically and then chemically, using chlorine that evaporates in 30 minutes. After the cleaning, a lock with a wind rose is fixed on the top.
The pump operates with the wind power of at least two metres/second.
LN writes that Floris’s pumps are widely used by farmers both in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia.
It has been installed, for instance, in the steppe in Milovice, central Bohemia, where a nature reserve of wild horses was established last year. In the first months, water had to be transported there. After the Floris pump was installed, care of the horses became easier and less costly, LN adds.
Another pump will soon be installed in the prison in Jirice, central Bohemia, to water its large fruit and vegetable garden.
There is also a high interest in the wind-powered manual pumps abroad.
Three pumps, funded by the Czech government, operate in poor settlements in Ghana, whose inhabitants had no clean drinking water. Another 19 Floris pumps have been sent to Mongolia. At present Floris is tuning up details of a contract with India, LN writes.
So far, Floris has made the pumps himself with the aid of his family. However, he wants to keep the pump’s price low to make it broadly available. This is why he would like the production programme to be bought abroad to get the pumps to the regular retail network, he told LN.
The paper writes that Floris is still trying to innovate his pump. At present, he is working on the connection of a propeller with a generator to be able to produce additional electric power for further use.
“Nothing is ever as perfect that it cannot be improved,” he told the daily.
hol/t/ms
