To: Professor Weinschenk, WTSN 104, Section 54 From: David Martuscello Date: February 15th, 2012 Re: Research

Paper #1 Researching Technologies Problem Statement: Design a system to provide safe drinking water to the people in urban areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Introduction: Approximately 1 billion people around the world do not have safe drinking water available to them (Arnal, 2009, p.34). Of the many countries in Africa where this is a major problem, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the worst. Years of being torn apart by internal conflict has led to the degradation of society and has put a major damper on development of national infrastructure there. These circumstances have led to the DRC becoming extremely poor. The lack of infrastructure in the country has also hindered clean water access. In sub-Saharan Africa there is a large portion of the population, approximately 53%, without access to safe drinking water sources (Held, 2012, p.2). For the economic situation to recover it is necessary for the citizens to have water access. It is shown that 50% of people without safe water suffer health problems from the diseases and parasites that dwell there. (Arnal, 2009, p.34) Drinking water has an enormous impact on child mortality rate and life expectancy which are two key factors that are viewed when determining the health of a nation. Water and sanitation greatly hinder developing countries from improving their economy and health so before the DRC can move forward economically it must reduce this problem significantly (Arnal, 2009, p.35). Fortunately for these nations, the movement for reducing this crisis is gaining speed internationally. The UN Millennium Development Goals are often brought up in talks about water treatment. They discuss the plans to reduce the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by half by 2015. This has caused a need for new innovations in the area of water treatment that can be utilized to help achieve this ambitious goal. (Arnal, 2009, p.35) The articles Quantification of human and embodied energy of improved water provided by source and household interventions as well as Ultrafiltration as an alternative membrane technology to obtain safe drinking water from surface water discuss technologies that are being used and developed to help this issue. The information found in these sources will allow us to learn about the various types of technologies that can be applied to the problem that we are confronting. We will be able to compare a number of technologies currently used for water treatment in places much like the DR Congo. The first article that will be introduced discusses the varying amounts of energy involved in the implementation of a number of water treatment technologies. This will help us to be able to pick the most efficient technology. The second article is an in-depth description of the AQUAPOT project. The AQUAPOT is a relatively new water treatment system that uses ultrafiltration to provide a simple and compact method of water treatment. The article describes the ultrafiltration process and how it is used to provide an improved water treatment method. The testing that has been done with this product has shown it to

reduce some of the hindrances with current technologies. These articles will give us a wealth of information that will make us more prepared to tackle the problem at hand. Embodied energy of improved water projects This document explains how the various types of water treatment systems vary in efficiency. The study explained in this article measured how much energy is put into a water treatment project compared to the benefits that it brings. This measurement includes the materials, manufacturing and human labor involved in these projects. In previous studies similar to this, the human energy involved was deemed as negligible but this study took it into account and found that over 90% of a project was human energy (Held, 2012, p.1). This is very significant because it shows that the technology is playing a smaller role than expected. A reduction in the amount of human energy would make these projects more efficient. Also, many of the studies analyzing these technologies focus on the health and economic benefits that a technology may bring while neglecting the environmental and social impacts that are also quite important (Held, 2012, p.2). The technologies that were analyzed were broken up into two categories, the household level and water source treatment systems (Held, 2012, p.1). There was four of each type of treatment technology tested in this study. The house hold systems included boiling, chlorine addition, clay ceramic filtration, and biosand filtration. The water source systems included well improvement, the addition of a rope pump, the India Mark II hand pump, or solar powered pump. These were chosen because they were the most common of the water treatment technologies that are currently used and they exhibit a wide range of possible solutions. The two measurements taken to quantify energy were the total energy of the project and the human energy involved in construction and use of the technology. (Held, 2012, p.4) The Economic Input/ Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) method, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, was used to assess the energy used in the production of a product including materials and services (Held, 2012, p.6). Many elaborate methods were used to insure accuracy in calculating the energy values. The individual technologies had different situations and were treated differently but in a way so that the data gathered would be comparable to the other technologies. The study also used a combination of techniques to analyze total cost as to eliminate the downsides of the various calculation methods. (Held, 2012, p.7-8) To calculate the human energy embodiment they used a calculation involving the physical activity ratio (PAR) and the basal metabolic rate (BMR) (Held, 2012, p.11). This allowed them to determine a uniform way to quantify human energy across a wide spectrum of activities. Many of the measurements had to be made manually, such as the average walking distance to get water and average speed to get there (Held, 2012,p. 11-13). The processes used to gain these measurements were presented as a flow chart with many different routes depending on what criteria were met (Held, 2012, p.25). This provides a way to understand the complex analysis that is taking place. Lastly, a sensitivity analysis was performed to determine which areas were most important to the measurements (Held, 2012, p.13). This would allow them to gain accurate results that could be acted upon reliably. The results of this study showed that the technologies with the lowest embodied energy were the improved well, rope pump, biosand filter and household chlorination. These

were all around the same level and they were the technologies that involved less material inputs and more human energy inputs to collect and transport water. The rope pump had the best balance between human energy and material input but it was not significantly lower than the others in total energy. The remaining technologies had drastically increasing energy inputs compared to the first set. The Solar Pump, India Mark II hand pump, and the clay ceramic filter had increasing levels with the process of boiling water topping the list at a level twice as high as any other technology (Held, 2012, p.14). This shows that the highest energy totals were attributed to the technologies with the highest material inputs. Ultrafiltration technology to obtain safe drinking water: The AQUAPOT Project Water Treatment technologies often utilize a combination of different methods including disinfection, sedimentation, coagulation and flocculation (Arnal, 2009, p.35). Due to the poverty in these nations the large scale water projects serving large amounts of people are not able to be developed. As a result they must resort to cheaper household water treatment options which are inefficient and are not always effective (Arnal, 2009, p.35). The AQUAPOT system was originally designed in 1996 by the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The idea behind the project was to develop a cheap and efficient way to treat water within a household. (Arnal, 2009, p.36) The technology used is an ultrafiltration membrane system that uses holes from 1 to 100nm to filter out even the smallest bacteria and viruses. This process eliminates the need for chemicals or large elaborate structures as well as producing a steady supply of water independent of input water quality. (Arnal, 2009, p.36) This lowers the cost and the environmental impact making this technology extremely beneficial when compared to other methods. The system is also very versatile because it can be adapted to the situation and environment that it is being used in. Tests have shown that this product lives up to its desired result and is adaptable, simple and highly effective (Arnal, 2009, p.37). When a comprehensive cost estimate was calculated the price came to approximately 18,000 to 20,000. The water output was measured to be about 1,000-2,000 L/h. (Arnal, 2009, p.37) This is a great result and a relatively cheap price for the number of people it is able to help. Four AQUAPOT systems have been installed at schools in Africa and have directly serviced over 5000 children (Arnal, 2009, p.38). This design has been in development for a number of years and laboratory and field tests have shown positive results for the future of the AQUAPOT. Conclusion: The article on embodied energy will be useful to our final solution because the information provided in this article will help us to determine the technologies that use the most efficient methods. It allows us to equally compare a number of the most common water treatment technologies. We can limit the human and material energy necessary to get the best outcome. We will be able to maximize our available funds and resources which will lead to a successful project. With the information gained in the AQUAPOT article, we are able to see a new technology that has a wide range of benefits for areas without safe drinking water. With this information we will be able to determine whether or not we should utilize this technique for our solution in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This will be very

helpful to our design effort because it shows, in detail, another option for water treatment. The AQUAPOT System may turn out to be the most viable solution and this article gives a great deal of information about it. Through the testing of this product, it was found that a key component to a successful water treatment project is the regular maintenance and supervision after the improvement is in place (Arnal, 2009, p.40). This is something that we can learn a lot from when we devise our own solution to this problem. Recommendations: Based on reading these articles, I would make the following recommendations for the project: We should utilize the advanced filtration techniques developed in the AQUAPOT project. It has had promising results and has a number of large benefits when compared to other technologies. When the technologies were compared in the embodied energy article, one of the best contenders was the biosand filter which is similar in function to the AQUAPOT system. If we can combine the technologies of this system and adapt them for our needs in the DRC we will be able to create a design specific to that region. It will be important to research the specific details of the DRC to determine whether this technology will work well in that setting.

Reference: Held, B. R., Zhang, Q., Mihelcic, J. R. (2012). Quantification of human and embodied energy of improved water provided by source and household interventions, Journal of Cleaner Production, ISSN 0959-6526, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.01.018. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652612000303?v=s5) Arnal, J.M. , Garcia-Fayos, B., Verdu, G., Lora, J. (2009). Ultrafiltration as an alternative membrane technology to obtain safe drinking water from surface water: 10 years of experience on the scope of the AQUAPOT project, Desalination, Volume 248, Issues 13, Pages 34-41, ISSN 0011-9164, 10.1016/j.desal.2008.05.035. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916409005645)