The U.K ‘Bright Spark’ BSRIA (Building Services Research & Information) building services industry award has been won by Inventa Partners and QinetiQ for the development and application of a revolutionary new material that copies the properties of the wing surface of the Namibian desert beetle for collecting precious drinking water from an invisible mist. Prototypes are now under test for industrial applications that include recycling the water lost by the evaporating cooling towers used by AC (air-conditioning) systems.

The new material could save many billions of litres currently lost every day through evaporation from AC systems – which is a major cost and environmental problem for developed regions.

There are more than 50,000 new cooling towers installed globally each year, and one large system will evaporate over 500 million litres each year. The heating and ventilation industry is valued at £65 billion a year globally, and is projected to increase to £80 billion by 2006:

“ We are now commercialising the application with a leading building services partner and anticipate that it will go into production during 2005,” says Kerry Thompson, executive director for Inventa Partners, who identify new commercial opportunities for building sector companies, arising from new technologies - www.inventapartners.com.

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