Submission + - Forward Osmosis could be a life saver for cholera victims
cramco writes: A time-lapse video has appeared showing the Forward Osmosis technology behind a new IV that could save hundreds of thousands of lives in countries suffering from cholera:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe3OP0-x36A&feature=youtu.be
Reduced shipping costs for IV bags could save more lives than we can imagine. Case in point: Traditional one-liter IV bags used to combat cholera weigh about 2.3 lbs, or just under 38 oz. A new IV bag called Mali weighs about 2 oz. The difference? No water in the Mali bag, saving more than $500 on a shipment of 14 units to an African country. Once there, the Mali bag can be mixed with any kind of water, even urine, to create a sterile solution. Without water, it can also be shipped and transported more economically and benefit from a longer shelf life. This could save 100,000+ lives annually.
The technology behind the bag is called Forward Osmosis (FO). Here's how it works: If you put a membrane between water and any type of salt, the salt will create a draw that will move water through the membrane. This process requires no power, as opposed to Reverse Osmosis (RO), which uses power to push water containing salt and other solids to produce clean water.
The FO process leaves the water with salt in its content. The salt in this case could be sodium chloride, sugar, potassium chloride, magnesium and others. This lends itself beautifully to IV solutions since most of these solutions require salt of some type to be injected into veins.
The manufacturer is trying to get some funding under a Philips Innovation Fellowship run on Indiegogo. Here's more about the Indiegogo campaign and how the IV bag works:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-120-000-lives-from-cholera-deaths-around-the-world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe3OP0-x36A&feature=youtu.be
Reduced shipping costs for IV bags could save more lives than we can imagine. Case in point: Traditional one-liter IV bags used to combat cholera weigh about 2.3 lbs, or just under 38 oz. A new IV bag called Mali weighs about 2 oz. The difference? No water in the Mali bag, saving more than $500 on a shipment of 14 units to an African country. Once there, the Mali bag can be mixed with any kind of water, even urine, to create a sterile solution. Without water, it can also be shipped and transported more economically and benefit from a longer shelf life. This could save 100,000+ lives annually.
The technology behind the bag is called Forward Osmosis (FO). Here's how it works: If you put a membrane between water and any type of salt, the salt will create a draw that will move water through the membrane. This process requires no power, as opposed to Reverse Osmosis (RO), which uses power to push water containing salt and other solids to produce clean water.
The FO process leaves the water with salt in its content. The salt in this case could be sodium chloride, sugar, potassium chloride, magnesium and others. This lends itself beautifully to IV solutions since most of these solutions require salt of some type to be injected into veins.
The manufacturer is trying to get some funding under a Philips Innovation Fellowship run on Indiegogo. Here's more about the Indiegogo campaign and how the IV bag works:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-120-000-lives-from-cholera-deaths-around-the-world
