Our mission is to improve water treatment technologies so that communities in the Global South can afford safe, clean drinking water. Our focus is on small scale water treatment systems designed for turbidity removal and pathogen inactivation. The treatment systems can operate without an external power source and can be maintained by rural communities.
We are working with non-governmental organizations in Honduras with the goal of increasing their capacity so that they may be able to scale up the technologies and help distribute the technologies throughout Honduras. Our long term goal is to spread these technologies throughout the Global South.
| Under the supervision of Fred Stottlemyer (National Rural Water Supply), a team of students forms with the goal of designing a water treatment plant for the La34 community in Honduras and begin construction by December 2004. |
| Monroe Weber-Shirk teaches the first iteration of a course in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell: CEE 454: Small-Scale Sustainable Water Supply. The course covers public health issues, an analysis of typhoid reduction, and unit processes for water treatment. The design project for the course is to create a flow control device for chemical feed into the plant. (One of the observed problems with chlorinators in Honduras was the lack of flow control.) |
| Two students (Roslyn Odum and Anne Mikelonis) go to Honduras as ESW SEED volunteers to get the construction for the La34 plant underway. Cedric Coppens (from Cranfield University in the UK) is also in Honduras -- see the Reports page for his Thesis. |
| The flow control device developed via CEE 454 (taught in Fall 2004) is implemented in the La34 plant. The Cornell-developed device consisted of an innovative design with discrete and accurate adjustments in flow rate using head loss in a tube. This is highly advantageous over the continuous adjustment provided by a valve, which may or may not achieve the desired flow rate. |
| AguaClara's flow control device is compared to a design recommended by the World Health Organization which required the use of large stones in an open tank to make head loss adjustments. |
| Six Masters students and roughly a dozen undergraduates continue the AguaClara project team. The goal for this academic year is to work on a second design for Ojojona, Honduras (Team Beta), research tube flocculation (TubeFlocSed Team), design a solar-powered alum doser (Automated Alum Team), and work on a method for controlling pH using a lime feeder (Lime Feeder Team). |
| Late in the semester (December '05), the team concludes that shear is a significant factor in flocculation design and effectiveness. The first tube flocculator was built and immediately converted into a miniature pilot plant to take to Honduras in January of 2006. |
| Between 2005 and 2006, a shift occurs in the plant design method from horizontal to vertical flocculation. Vertical flocculation eliminates the need for an elevated tank (constructed in La34). Research in AguaClara is motivated by the theory that vertical flocculation may be more effective than horizontal flocculation due to the significance of differential sedimentation, which keeps flocs in suspension. |
| Between 2005 and 2006, plate settlers are also added to the Ojojona plant. The plate settlers decrease the settling time for particles, enabling the construction of a smaller sedimentation tank that is equally (if not more) effective. |
| During the trip to Honduras in January of 2006, the pilot plant and rolling bottle test for alum dosing are used as educational tools. |
| Ted Segal, a Cornell student who completed a detailed structural design for the plant in Ojojona, finishes his degree a semester early and travels to Honduras as a volunteer from January to May 2006. Because of delays in plant construction, Ted interns with Agua Para el Pueblo (APP, AguaClara's partner NGO). |
| In May of 2006, the Lime Feeder research is discontinued. The team discovers that a Lime Feeder is difficult to maintain and operate. Negative carbonate ions in the raw water bond with the positive calcium ions from the dissolving lime. Because of this process, the lime particles become encased an inaccessible for dissolution. The team decides that a more soluble compound will be needed. |
| Dan Smith, Kelly Costraz and Scott Payne (students) travel to Honduras as ESW SEED volunteers. |
| Dan's expertise in environmental engineering and concrete structures is beneficial in his role as an on-site construction supervisor. Most of the concrete construction is completed over the course of the summer. |
| Kelly and Scott work on using the pilot plant as a method of training future plant operators. They set up the pilot plant in a local health center and it proves to be an effective training tool. Kelly and Scott also teach the rolling bottle test (for determining appropriate alum doses) to future plant operators. |
| Because no Cornell students are in Honduras, APP takes over supervision of the plant construction. |
| Monroe Weber-Shirk teaches the second iteration of CEE 454: Small-Scale Sustainable Water Supply. During this semester, the course focuses on creating design algorithms in MathCad for plant components rather than a whole, specific plant. The goal is to create applications that will output component designs based on a few required input parameters. |
| This new method is a significant deviation from the design method used for the La34 and Ojojona plants, which were designed from scratch. To make considerable progress, we will need to expedite the design process by having algorithms. This also begins our work towards open source engineering with the ultimate goal of making design algorithms available online via MathCad application server. |
Webmaster:
J. Capurso & M. Weber-Shirk
Copyright © 2007 AguaClara | All Rights Reserved