IBO – The World’s Smartest Water Bottle

Lamaara started in the year 2015 focusing on various IoT products that can solve different problems faced in the public society. In the year 2017, we received an idea grant of 2 lakh Rupees from Kerala start-up mission for our product i-Bo to build up prototypes and conduct market surveys. We utilized that fund in developing various prototypes and conducting lab tests. We were able to research a lot on filter technology and bottle designs. We were also able to develop a unique filter technology and incorporate it into our custom designed water bottle. When we started the project, we had made the bottle smart with integrated electronic systems to measure the impurity levels in the water and give dehydration alerts to our customers. We conducted markets surveys with this product across various platforms and found out that customers needed the filter technology the most rather than the smart technology introduced by us. After conducting further discussions with our team we planned to make our product i-Bo into three versions, which are Alpha, Beta and Gamma. The alpha version is just a filter with the bottle, the beta version has the smart dehydration alert systems and custom-made app and the gamma version have a feature to make the liquid inside the bottle hot or cold by using the mobile app. This report consists of brief descriptions related to the making of our product and the technology we have developed. Since the prototype stages are over we would like to receive a scale-up grant in order to start production of i-Bo as early as possible.

Prototypes developed

All the prototypes of i-Bo shown below were developed by Lamaara after conducting research and analysis. Our completed prototypes are shown below.

Prototype – 1

This was our first prototype which consists of activated carbon filter wounded with PP cotton. The bottle consisted of electronic parts that made it smart, it was connected to a mobile application that helped to monitor dehydration levels of the customer and also the helped to check the purity of the water. The bottle was divided into two components with one component consisting of the filter cartridge and water storing cavity and the second part consisted of electronic boards and power system.

Prototype – 2

This prototype was further developed with increased battery life and also a power storage system that could be able to charge mobile phones. The bottle took 5 minutes to purify the water taken in the bottle. One of the problems we had faced with our product is that we had used a pumping system to filter the water, this system had consumed a lot of power. If the battery had drained out the filtration system would not work.

Prototype – 3

In this bottle, we incorporated a technology that could filter out the water without any power. The filter materials were incorporated into a capsule through which the person was able to suck out the water, and the filter ensured standard purification. The product also included filter alert on the bottle cap itself with visual alerts.

Other prototypes we had developed with our technology outside India

This prototype was developed with our unique filtration technology which we had outsourced to Shanghai, China for meeting the requirement of the federal bank’s order.

Final Product

This is our final product which is named i-Bo Alpha which is developed concentrating on the filtration part and customer convenience. It has our 3 level filtration technology that can purify water completely. The product is made with graffiti designs to attract a different category of customers.

Filter Technology

While making the prototypes of i-Bo, we had bought several existing products and tested their technologies, with much further research on various filter technologies around the world we were able to come up with a unique filter technology that will filter out Suspended particles, sediment, iron & many heavy metals, micro-organism, color & bad odor are separated from raw water effectively during filtration.

Our filtration technique consists of mainly 3 layers which include:

• The core of our filter is made up of Nano-fibre membrane made with the help of nanotechnology which will help to remove 99.9999% of microorganisms such as bacteria and protozoa, this membrane has a pore size of 0.2 microns that will not allow any microorganisms to pass through it. This is the most advanced technology for water filtration.
• The second stage of filtration consists of coconut activated carbon which will be able to remove the odour, chemicals and chlorine contents from the water.
• The third stage of our filter consists of a mineral add-on feature that will add minerals to the water and make the water slightly alkaline so that it is beneficial for the health of our customer. The alkalinity of the water can kill viruses.

How does our filtration system work?

Our Filter uses Nano-fiber membrane micro-filtration with a 0.2-micron pore size. This means that dirty water goes into the filter cartridge, microorganisms are physically removed and safe drinking water comes out. Imagine really small tubes with even smaller pores that trap contaminants, but allow water to flow through, this is the basic filtration mechanism. It removes 99.9999% of waterborne bacteria, including E. coli, and 99.9% of waterborne protozoa, including Giardia & Cryptosporidium. It also reduces turbidity, filtering down to 0.2 microns.