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Corporate knowledge is being lost as the workforce becomes more mobile and people rarely stay in the one job for life.

But UWA seems to breed stayers and it was one of these who helped the University to win a new $20,000 water purification system.

Professor George Yeoh, a cancer researcher in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, at WAIMR and in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, knew exactly when the last system had been bought, because he ordered it - in 1975.

Nikitas Economou, a laboratory technician in Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, heard about a nation-wide competition to find the oldest water purification system that was still working.

"I recognised the old one we had here because it was identical to one I'd used and worked on at Royal Perth Hospital back in the 1970s," Nikitas said. "And I figured it must have been more than 30 years old.

"I checked the records and found that Professor Yeoh had purchased it and confirmed it with him and, yes, it turned out to be the oldest working system in the country."

Head of School, Winthrop Professor Linc Schmitt, said it was thanks to Nikita's skills that the old machine was still going.

"And we're very grateful to him for acquiring us a new one - free of charge," he said.

The company Merck Millipore ran the competition and presented UWA with the new Milli-Q Advantage water purification system last month.

"We received many hundreds of entries from hospitals, labs and pharmaceutical companies around Australia," said Lucy Ashley from Merck Millipore. "The universities tended to have the oldest ones."

Nikitas said the machine was used to purify water for dilution of drugs and blood and for DNA and PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) work.

"The system produces water that is absolutely pure, free of salts, irons and organics.  It's like double distilling it," he said. "This new one is a lot cleaner than the old one; it has more features and better monitoring, so there's no guesswork involved any more."

The laboratories in Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology use between 100 and 200 litres of purified water each week.

"We're happy for other schools to use the new equipment too, so I guess that number will be going up very soon."