Awards:

· the 2018 Royal Society's Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation Translation Award for the StarHealer

· the 2014 'Best new product of the year' award for StarStream

· the 2012 Institute of Chemical Engineering Award for Water Management and Supply

· the 2011 Royal Society Brian Mercer Award for Innovation

Peer-reviewed validation:

(Click on the hyperlinks in the reference list to download the papers)

Applications:

By passing sound down gentle streams of unheated water, without chemicals, our streams can remove bacteria, fungi, viruses and a range of contaminants, without damaging the object being cleaned (unlike repeated alcohol gel use with hands; and hot water with lettuce). Validation of the technology includes cleaning hands [1], baby equipment [2], foodstuffs and associated pipework/packaging [2, 3, 4, 5] (including salads that usually cannot be made safe through cooking [6]), rail components [7, 8], surgical instruments [9, 10] and tools [1], grease [1, 11], bone prior to transplant [9], and bacterial [9], dental [9, 12] and marine [13] biofilms.

It can reduce infection risks wherever water is used to rinse, from cleaning hay to reduce the incidence of infections in cattle and horses [5], to cleaning surgical instruments between patients to avoid a patient in surgery becoming ill from infectious residues on the instruments from the previous patients [10].

Because it uses only sound, air and water, without needing a specific chemical agent, and since the sound does not travel down the sink into the wastewater systems, then unlike the use of conventional antimicrobial treatments (antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals etc.) the use of such technology does not so readily promote the rise of AntiMicrobial Resistance (AMR) [3, 14, 15].

Turning science into societal gain:

Over three decades of fundamental scientific discovery were required to fulfil the goal of revolutionizing the way stream of water clean and transform other surfaces (finish materials, heal wounds etc.) [16, 17]. As a result, wherever water (or other liquid) cleans in a stream, its ability to clean is enhanced by the use of SWT’s nozzles.

SWT’s nozzles can address today’s problems, which will (if we go on as we are, as a society) produce two global catastrophes face us by 2050:

* There will be an extra 2-Billion-people: extending food shelf-life is critical to the 5-point-plan to feed them (currently 50% of world's food weight is wasted before consumption).

* AntiMicrobial Resistance (AMR) will be killing more people than cancer and will have cost the global economy more than the current size.

Governmental reports quantifying these threats point to absence of adequate solutions in existing technologies. The common theme between these two catastrophes is cleaning, which extends food shelf-life, reduces the chance of food poisoning (especially on salads that are not usually sterilized by cooking [6]) and reduces/prevents infection (thereby reducing/precluding the use of antimicrobials). SWT’s nozzles, cleaning with cold water without the need to add chemicals, speaks to both global challenges.

COVID-19:

Hands and surfaces can also transmit infections. The UK Government recommend a 20s wash in warm soapy water, but the average [18] that people will devote to it is 6 s. Even in the COVID-19 pandemic, only 1% of hospital visitors fully complied with recommendations [19].

Sloan Water Technology Ltd.’s technology is particularly important in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Fitted to water taps and faucets, the technology cleans from day 1 of any outbreak of infectious disease: it does not need to wait the 2 months to identify a pandemic, a further week to identify the genetic code of the infectious agent, or wait 12-24 months to get a vaccination. It does not require specialist training to adopt: its use is as easy as turning on a tap.

In times of pandemic [11], when existing supply chains are broken so that bleach, detergent, alcohol and soap does not reach end-users (for example when transporters, packagers, distributors and producers such staff shortages or their own supply chains fail) or are delayed in being set up (e.g. when a field hospital is first set up with just mains electricity and water but no consumables), the ability to decontaminate skin and surfaces with limited consumables will be critical.

If soap is present, SWT’s nozzles can make it clean more effectively, producing greater cleanliness in the limited time people devote to cleaning hands etc. When supply chains fail, it enhances the ability of water to clean without soaps.

Sloan Water Technology is being supported by Innovate UK to develop its water-taps so that they can combat upcoming pandemics before they turn into catastrophes. This is vital: the virus behind COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is the 6th lethal virus with pandemic potential to jump from animals to humans since the year 2000.

References

[1] Leighton, T. G. (2017). "The acoustic bubble: Ocean, cetacean and extraterrestrial acoustics, and cold water cleaning". Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 797 (1): 012001. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/797/1/012001. ISSN 1742-6596

[2] Leighton, T. G. (2014) Bubble Acoustics: From whales to other worlds, Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, Vol. 36, Part 3, pp. 58-86

[3] Leighton, T. G. (2017) Climate Change, Dolphins, Spaceships and Antimicrobial Resistance - the Impact of Bubble Acoustics. Proceedings of the 24th International Congress on Sound and Vibration ICSV24 (23-27 July 2017. London; Editor, B. Gibbs) ISSN 2329-3675; ISBN 978-1-906913-27-4; paper no. 6

[4] Leighton, T. G. (2018) Cold water cleaning in the preparation of food and beverages: The power of shimmering bubbles. Baking Europe (Summer 2018), pp. 24-28. http://www.bakingeurope.eu/OnlinePublication/Summer2018/mobile/index.html

[5] Chong, W. Y., Cox, C., Secker, T. J., Keevil, C. W. and Leighton, T. G. (2021) Improving livestock feed safety and infection prevention: Removal of bacterial contaminants from hay using cold water, bubbles and ultrasound. Ultrasonic Sonochemistry, 71, 105372 (6 pages) (doi: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2020.105372). (Dataset electronic archive to accompany this paper is at doi=10.5258/SOTON/D1331).

[6] Chong, W. Y., Secker, T. J., Dolder, C. N., Keevil, C. W. and Leighton, T. G. (2021) The possibilities of using Ultrasonically Activated Streams to reduce the risk of foodborne infection from salad. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, 46(6), 1616-1630 (doi: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2021.01.026). Dataset electronic archive to accompany this paper is at doi: 10.5258/SOTON/D1212).

[7] Leighton, T. G. (2015). The acoustic bubble: oceanic bubble acoustics and ultrasonic cleaning. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 24(70006), 1-15 (doi: 10.1121/2.0000121).

[8] Goodes, L., Harvey, T., Symonds, N. and Leighton, T.G. (2016) A comparison of ultrasonically activated water stream and ultrasonic bath immersion cleaning of railhead leaf-film contaminant. Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties, 4(3), 034003 (doi: 10.1088/2051-672X/4/3/034003).

[9] Birkin P.R., Offin D.G., Vian C.J.B., Howlin R.P., Dawson J.I., Secker T.J., Herve R.C., Stoodley P., Oreffo R.O.C., Keevil C.W. and Leighton T.G. (2015) Cold water cleaning of brain proteins, biofilm and bone - harnessing an ultrasonically activated stream. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 17, 20574-20579 (doi: 10.1039/C5CP02406D).

[10] Secker, T. J., Leighton, T. G., Offin, D. G., Birkin, P. R., Herve, R. C. and Keevil, C. W. (2020) A cold water, ultrasonic activated stream efficiently removes proteins and prion-associated amyloid from surgical stainless steel. Journal of Hospital Infection, 106(4), 649-456 (doi: 10.1016/j.jhin.2020.09.021).

[11] Malakoutikhah, M., Dolder, C. N., Secker, T. J., Zhu, M., Harling, C. C., Keevil, C. W. and Leighton, T. G. (2020) Industrial lubricant removal using an ultrasonically activated water stream, with potential application for Coronavirus decontamination and infection prevention for SARS-CoV-2. Transactions of the Institute of Metal Finishing, 98(5), 258-270 (doi: 10.1080/00202967.2020.1805221).

[12] Howlin R.P., Fabbri S.,Offin D.G., Symonds N., Kiang K.S., Knee R.J., Yoganantham D.C., Webb J.S., Birkin P.R., Leighton T.G., Stoodley P. (2015) Removal of dental biofilms with a novel ultrasonically-activated water stream. Journal of Dental Research, 94(9), 1303-1309 (doi:10.1177/0022034515589284) Electronic supplementary material can be found at http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/377535/

[13] Salta, M., Goodes, L., Mass, B., Dennington, S., Secker, T. and Leighton, T.G. (2016) Bubbles vs. biofilms: A novel method for the removal of marine biofilms attached on antifouling coatings using an ultrasonically activated water stream. Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties, 4(3), 034009 (doi: 10.1088/2051-672X/4/3/034009). The data for this paper are available at http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/399420/

[14] Leighton, T.G. (2018) Can we end the threat of Anti-Microbial Resistance once and for all? Science in Parliament, 74(3), 29-32

[15] Leighton, T. G. (2017) To stop AMR once and for all: stop killing the bugs! EPSRC Blog: https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/blog/stopamr/

[16] Leighton, T. G. (2020) From research to engagement to translation: Words are cheap. Part 1 - research funding and its consequences. Transactions of the Institute of Metal Finishing, 98(4), 161-164 (doi: 10.1080/00202967.2020.1777765) (peer-reviewed Guest Editorial).

[17] Leighton, T. G. (2020) From research to engagement to translation: Words are cheap. Part 2 - a case study. Transactions of the Institute of Metal Finishing, 98(5), 217-220 (doi: 10.1080/00202967.2020.1805187) (peer-reviewed Guest Editorial).

[18] Borchgrevink, C. P., Cha, J. and Kim, S. (2013) Hand washing practices in a college town environment. J. Environmental Health, 75(8), 18-25 (PMID: 23621052).

[19] Sahiledengle, B., Tekalegn, Y., Takele, A., Zenbaba, D., Teferu, Z., Tasew, A., Assefa, T., Bekele, K., Tesemma, A., Gezahegn, H., Awoke, T. and Quisido, B. J. E. (2020) Hand Washing Compliance and COVID-19: A Non-Participatory Observational Study among Hospital Visitors. medRxiv Preprint (doi: 10.1101/2020.06.02.20120022).