Access to clean drinking water can be a big issue onboard, particularly for those venturing off the beaten track or heading off bluewater sailing. Now a new, easy-to-fit, purification system allows you to keep and purify water onboard without resorting to plastic bottles or chemicals and all in a low energy package.

PRP Optoelectronics’ Aegina is the world’s only Class A UVC LED water purification system. It will be of particular interest to the sailing world as the engineered solutions are suitable for fitting onto a boat’s tankage system, for which Aegina’s small mobile units are capable of producing 3, 6, 12 and 18 litres per minute.

The water purifier can take ground or stored water and treat it guaranteeing 99.99% pure water – as tested independently up to NSF 55 Class A specification. Although other UVC LED purifiers do exist, the unique Class A rating is what sets Aegina apart – Class B can only purify water already suitable for drinking, known as polishing water.

UVC Technology has been around for some time as a water disinfection process, but older methods (typically producing the UVC light with mercury lamps) have always been costly to fit and run, not to mention bad for the environment.

By directing light at the water, using a specific wavelength, UVC purifiers are able to change the structure of the viruses and bacteria, essentially irreversibly damaging the DNA of the cells, which are unable to recover or reproduce. This is known as thymine dimerization.

The benefits of the Aegina system are clear and multifaceted. This is an incredibly ‘green’ way to deal with drinking water. Gone are the plastic bottles, gone are the tank chemicals and gone are the mercury lamps of old UVC light tech.

The environmentally friendly credentials go further too. Aegina has been engineered to offer a lifetime of easily maintainable service, materials have been sourced responsibly – over 90% of the unit is recyclable – and it’s manufactured in the UK to the highest possible standards.

But benefits are not limited to treating the environment better. As most boaters will know, LED lights are, by a measure, more efficient than other sources of light and so much less demanding on batteries.

As a whole the Aegina system has an extremely low power requirement of 12/24V, so it can be run off a battery, solar or wind if need be, as well as the mains power. With an instant on/off there is no warmup time needed, power is only used whilst the unit is in operation and is very quiet.

In effect, the benefits of a Class A UVC LED Water purifier are felt directly in the pocket of the boat owner who has installed it. Typically, it only costs 0.03p for 12 Litres of Class A pure water with Aegina.

For those considering installing an Aegina system onboard and reading the benefits of cheap, green purified water, installation hassle is also impressively low, with no specialist trades required for installation or maintenance.