Battling cholera with NFC RFID-tracked drinking water in Haiti

Deep Springs International (DSI), a non-profit organization based in Pennsylvania, USA, and Nokia Research Center (NRC), Palo Alto, California, are teaming up to ensure the supply of clean drinking water in Haiti with NFC (near field communication) technology.

DSI has been delivering water treatment systems (which essentially consist of a covered 19-liter bucket with a spigot at the bottom) and a locally manufactured chlorine solution it has labeled Gadyen Dlo (Creole for "water guardian") since 2007.. Photo: Michael Ritter, DSI

Water treatment kits are being provided to track chlorine levels in household drinking water using NFC-enabled cell phones. NRC provided the health workers with approximately 50 Nokia 6212 NFC-enabled phones while UPM RFID supplied UPM BullsEye™ NFC tags with NXP Mifare Ultralight chip. Joseph “Jofish” Kaye, Senior Research Scientist, NRC, initiated the project together with David Holstius, a student and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health, who developed the software application for mobile phones.

Families in the most rural areas in Haiti will have one water treatment kit consisting of a five-gallon (19 litre) plastic bucket with a lid and spigot. The RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags are attached to buckets for storing the treated drinking water and delivered to families together with a chlorine solution and written instructions for using the kit. When DSI’s water technicians visit their homes, they check whether they are using the kits properly and provide additional chlorine solutions. The technicians will read the tags using NFC cell phones loaded with software guiding them to ask relevant questions about the water being tested. They then send the data to DSI’s headquarters via SMS. The software application uses the Frontline SMS platform.

Guatemala: construction guides for rural WASH facilities

Five Cabin Latrine, Aqua Para La Salud (Guatemala). Photo: Global Water

NGO Global Water provides instructions for building rural water, sanitation, and hygiene-related facilities that were developed by its partner in Guatemala, Agua Para La Salud (Water for Health). The facilities include:

• Ferro-Cement Water Storage Tank
• Hand Washing Stations (Lavamanos)
• Complete Spring Catchment System
• Five Cabin Latrine
• Gray Water Seepage Pits

View the designs at www.globalwater.org/how-to-build.html

Urine separation: Sinquiver to market urine-separating toilets in Chile

Chilean chemical solutions firm Sinquiver is looking into marketing urine separation systems in Chile, the firm’s wastewater manager Alistair Marsh told BNamericas.

There are several advantages to the system, according to Marsh. “First of all, you don’t need freshwater to flush urine so you save on water use and costs,” he said.

The concept involves installing a different pipeline which would channel the urine to be stored in a tank. “Urine is a huge source of nitrogen and phosphate which could then be used for the production of fertilizer,” Marsh said.

“This kind of system would be especially useful in mining operations which involve a large number of people,” said Marsh, adding: “It would save water while simultaneously providing a source of fertilizer for local farmers.”

An additional benefit is that by taking the urine out of sewage, wastewater is easier to treat.

Urine accounts for less than 1% of wastewater but it contains about 80% of the nitrogen, 50% of the phosphate and 70% of the potassium, all of which must be removed. Nutrient removal is the most difficult aspect of wastewater treatment. By separating the urine at source, studies have shown energy savings of 25% at wastewater treatment plants.

“We are looking to offer urine-separating toilets to municipalities and companies that employ a large number of people such as malls and hotels, among others,” Marsh said.

“Wastewater treatment is still very new in Latin America but there is a great need for it and that is where we come in,” said Marsh, adding: “Sinquiver is looking for the best technology and solutions to introduce into the local market.”

In addition to wastewater treatment, the company provides solutions for the wood and paper industry, and sells industrial equipment.

Source: Greta Bourke, BNamericas.com [subscription site], 19 Nov 2009

Chlorination: new urban clean water system for Haitian poor gets award by former President Clinton

The first chlorination system designed for cities in poor countries is now operating in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, announced Andrew Weiss of the Washington, D.C.-based NGO International Action at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in New York last week. “It’s a great success,” said Weiss.

“Installed on 150 public water tanks in Haiti’s capital city, our chlorination system in supplying 400,000 residents with clean, safe water. This is the first time Haitians have had access to clean water for cooking and drinking,” commented Weiss, a board member of the group which installed the chlorinators.

Andrew Weiss received a certificate of recognition for International Action from former President Bill Clinton at the CGI meeting on September 25, 2009.

Plumbers, Joanes Bastin and Emillio Bastien, hold up a pair of chlorine tablet feeders. Photo: International Action

Weiss described the clean water system as a two-foot tube holding 20 tablets of chlorine through which water passes into a neighborhood water tank. Simple test kits allow the local operator to measure how much chlorine is dissolved and to regulate the flow.

“This is a neighborhood system,” said Andrew Weiss, “simple enough to be run by local groups and sophisticated enough to clean the water for 10,000 users. A twice-larger version of the chlorinator can make water safe for 50,000 people. We have several of the larger chlorinators operating in Port-au-Prince and more than 100 of the smaller ones.”

“International Action hopes to distribute this clean water system to cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” said Weiss. “Currently, no one else has a system to treat urban neighborhood water tanks in poor countries, and our system is designed for this purpose.

“The tablet chlorinators will become a major breakthrough technology in public health,” predicted Weiss. “Waterborne diseases – cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, and chronic diarrhea – are the major cause of infant and child mortality today. Our chlorine kills these disease germs in water,” he stated.

Website: www.HaitiWater.org

Video showing how the International Action chlorinator works

Source: International Action, PRNewswire / Pacific Business News, 02 Oct 2009

Biogas: Chilean water utility inaugurates largest plant in South America

Chilean natural gas distributor Metrogas and water utility Aguas Andinas started up operations at the country’s first biogas plant installed at the Farfana water treatment complex on the outskirts of Santiago. The plant will produce 24Mm3/y of biogas and replace about 14Mm3/y of natural gas. “This is the only place in the world where biogas produced by a water treatment facility ends up being used directly in homes,” Metrogas president Matías Pérez Cruz said, adding that the biogas plant is the largest in South America. Investment in the project totaled 3bn pesos (US$5.3mn).

Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 14 May 2009

Meanwhile in Brazil, officials from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Paraná state water utility Sanepar [have met] to discuss projects to expand power generation sewage treatment plants. [...] Since 2008, Sanepar has been producing electric power from its [Ouro Verde sewage treatment plant in Foz do Iguaçu]. The plant produces energy for its own operations and the surplus is sold to power company Copel. [Sanepar wants to] extend the successful experience of Foz do Iguaçu to all [its] sewage treatment plants.

Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 25 May 2009

Nanotechnology for clean water

Can nanotechnology provide solutions to water treatment in the developing world and improve access to safe drinking water? SciDev.Net has launched a spotlight on 07 May 2009 to address this question, with a series of articles and commentaries written by international experts that:

• explore the potential of nanotechnology for clean water;
• outline the opportunities and hurdles facing policymakers on the ground;
• examine key issues including risk, regulation and technology transfer;
• and highlight progress made to date.

Go to the SciDev.Net Nanotech for Clean Water page

STAR-TIDES: Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support

The TIDES project (Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support) is a research effort to encourage information sharing and develop Communities of Interest to support populations in stressed environments. TIDES is one part of a broader effort called STAR (Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated Research). Phase I of TIDES included demonstrations in Oct-Nov 2007 at the National Defense University (NDU) and the Pentagon’s center court.

STAR-TIDES promotes affordable, sustainable, support to stressed populations-post-disaster, impoverished, or post-war, whether in a domestic and foreign context for a short- or long-term operation, with or without involvement of the military. It is an international research project to promote unity of effort among diverse organizations where there is no unity of control. As such it seeks to build bridges across boundaries between business, civil society and government stakeholders who are working toward common goals. The principal means are: (1) trust building and social network development, (2) sharing information and “sense-making” approaches and (3) low-cost logistic solutions.

STAR-TIDES focuses on seven infrastructures: shelter, water, power, integrated solar and combustion cooking, cooling/ lighting/heating, sanitation and information & communications technologies (ICT).

Technologies listed in the water section include:

• Q-Drum, a low cost rollable water container
• Aquatabs water purification tablets
• Water purifying products OneDrop and Bacsan (Water Development Program, UK)

So far no products are listed in the sanitation section.

STAR-TIDES is currently planning integrated approaches to the following four scenarios:

• Sub-Saharan Africa (household-level in hot, dry areas)
• Central America (camp-level in wet tropical areas)
• Afghan-centric approach
• USA module

Web site: http://www.star-tides.net

Researchers harness Google Earth to fight dengue

Researchers have used Google Earth to create a simple, inexpensive mapping tool to help fight vector-borne diseases like dengue in resource-poor countries.

In two cities in southeast Mexico, Merida and Chetumal, the team recorded data about infrastructure – such as the location of health facilities and water sources that may serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

[...]

The researchers say the Google Earth has several advantages, being low-cost and simple to use, with high quality satellite images available in urban areas – though they note that satellite image quality is poorer for rural areas.

The software can be operated on a desktop computer and requires only brief access to Internet to download the satellite images – an advantage for countries suffering from poor Internet access.

Furthermore, the researchers say, the tool can be combined with other free health mapping tools, such as the WHO’s HealthMapper, and the data is easily interchangeable between different mapping software packages.

The research was published in the September 2008 issue of Bulletin of the WHO [693KB]

Source: Arturo Barba, SciDevNet, 08 Oct 2008

Ron Rivera, Potter Devoted to Clean Water, Dies at 60

Ron Rivera / Potters without Borders

Ron Rivera liked to call his ceramic water filters “weapons of biological mass destruction.” For 25 years he traveled to poor villages throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia teaching local potters to make what appears to be a big terra-cotta flower pot but is in fact an ingenious device for purifying water. In 1998 he joined Potters for Peace and became where he became Coordinator of Filter and International Projects.

[...]

Mr. Rivera died on Sept. 3 in Managua, Nicaragua, after contracting falciparum malaria, the most dangerous form, while setting up a water-filter factory in Nigeria, said Kathy McBride, his wife. He was 60.

Read more: William Grimes, New York Times, 14 Sep 2008

Potters for Peace and Potters without Borders have set up memorial pages here and here.

See a presentation video on ceramic filters by Mr. Rivera’s below.

Venezuela: Government to install 125 solar powered potable water plants

Venezuela’s Fundelec, a foundation under supervision of the energy and oil ministry, which promotes nationwide electrification, is carrying out a programme to install solar powered potable water plants. A total of 60 plants (125 are planned) have already been installed, benefiting 59 communities and 14,820 inhabitants. The water plants are aimed at indigenous and isolated communities, as well as those located near international borders.

Source: BNamericas.com [subscription site], 17 Jun 2008