The Oman Humanitarian Desalination Challenge is a joint initiative led by MEDRC Water Research and The Research Council Oman with funding provided by The Sultan Qaboos Higher Center for Culture and Science.

The challenge seeks to create a hand-held, stand-alone, low-cost, desalination device for short-term use and rapid deployment following a humanitarian crises.

Access to clean fresh drinking water following a disaster is critical to health and survival. Current relief response measures often rely on transporting massive quantities of bottled water into the affected population or distributing water purification devices or tablets that don’t have the ability to rid water of salt.

There is an urgent need for a desalination device that can be deployed quickly and affordably to people in need of drinking water in times of crises.

No such product exists on the marketplace today.

The Oman Humanitarian Desalination Challenge has a prize purse of $700,000.

Launched on March 7th 2018, the challenge will roll once a year for a period of five years or until the prize has been won.

The challenge is open to any individual, team or organization from across the world who believes they have a product capable of meeting this need.


Register to compete here.