Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: A Low Cost Family Water Filter for Developing Countries
EPA Grant Number: SU835994Title: A Low Cost Family Water Filter for Developing Countries
Investigators: Meegoda, Jay N
Institution: New Jersey Institute of Technology
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: I
Project Period: September 1, 2015 through August 31, 2016
Project Amount: $15,000
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (2015) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: P3 Awards , Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development , Sustainable and Healthy Communities , P3 Challenge Area - Safe and Sustainable Water Resources
Objective:
Definition: The research project conducted at the New Jersey Institute of Technology is developing a water filter to provide purified drinking water to locals in the developing countries who are affected by the pollution of natural drinking water sources due to heavy contamination from agricultural activities. This filter is expected to remove pathogens as well as pesticides and heavy metals such as Pb, Cd, and As in drinking water due to the application of agricultural
chemicals. The heavy metals are said to be the reason for the high rate of people suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). The aim is to use the locally available materials such as bio-char, charcoal and hematite found in the developing nations for the development of low-cost clay-pot filters. The success of the project depends on the effectiveness and economical cost of the filter in removing contaminants from the drinking water, including pathogens.
Design: The design of the compact clay-pot filters involves the impregnation with locally available additives hematite and magnetite. The outstanding capabilities of hematite and magnetite for heavy metal absorbance and colloidal silver in clay-pot technology for pathogen removal are integrated in this design for water purification. The amount of additives, thickness of filter and the pore structures of the filter were varied to optimize the removal efficiency. The pore structure of the filter will be varied by the addition of saw dust, which will be burned inside the kiln to produce micropores.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
Various sustainability concepts and sustainable engineering design principles are incorporated through the low-cost filter development and interactions with students, faculty, social media, and other public. This project thus greatly increases the public awareness of sustainability by developing more transformative eco-friendly products with local resources. The success of the project will be measured quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative measurement will be indicated by the possible rate of production, quality control and production costs for the new clay-pot filters as well as the quantity of clean water obtained from this technology. The qualitative measurement of the project success could be reflected by the improved water quality (in comparison with the WHO standards) and the improved health conditions (e.g., less outbreaks of diseases or lower death rates) in the long run. The broader social benefits would be obtained by disseminating the project outcome to other developing nations. The improvement in quality of life, the amount of reported disease related to heavy metal poisoning from drinking water can be compared before and after deploying this low-cost filtration systems to evaluate the overall impact on social and economic perspectives in developing countries as a whole.
Conclusions:
Our literature search revealed that the combined effects of arsenic and cadmium to be a plausible factor for high CKD in Northeast Sri Lanka. Tracer quantities of arsenic and cadmium were found in excessively used fertilizer. With dry weather and limited rainfall, most of arsenic and cadmium is bio accumulated and impacting residents of Northeast Sri Lanka. Though the government of Sri Lanka has been instituting policies such as fertilizer subsidy reduction to curb the use of chemical fertilizer and making efforts to promote organic fertilizer, the relatively in-elastic relationship between the price of and demand for fertilizer, coupled with the limited availability of organic fertilizer in addition to the potential yield drops with the use of organic fertilizer all cumulated in creating issues hindering the rapid adaptation of organic fertilizer among Sri Lankan paddy farmers. Therefore, simply reducing the fertilizer subsidy would not encourage farmers to adopt organic fertilizer, bearing in mind that paddy cultivation is the only livelihood opportunity for more than 1.8 million farmers in the country. We also found out that about 75% of the households in the country have access to potable water, of which estimated 75% and 14% are located in the urban and rural areas respectively. Of the 75% clean water being produced, protected dug wells serve about 47% of the population and 23% are served pipe-borne water. The rest of the population are served by other means like hand pumps and also through forms of rainwater harvesting. Therefore, a substantial portion of the population of the population is at risk from possible exposure to heavy metals contaminated
water and plausible CKD. Though studies have suggested that the ultimate solution is the provision of centrally purified pipe-borne water, this may take a longer time at a higher monetary and resource cost. For that matter, the expedited expedient solution is to provide a low-cost water filter to each family to help secure clean and purified water for their day-to-day water needs. For this intervention to be sustainable, the design filters should not only provide reliable and rapid clean water, but also should be affordable to the people, considering the low-income status of the people in developing countries. For example, in Sri Lanka the average monthly real and nominal mean household income in 2012 is $320 and $193, respectively. Hence, production materials should best be acquired locally, and if possible design must prioritize the use of freely available local materials to cut production cost. For this reason, locally available and earth-abundant clay and sawdust in Sri Lanka was used as production materials. For the same reason, we have chosen a mixture of bio-char preferably non-activated slow pyrolysis type, which is currently available in a low-cost form of waste from an energy company operating at a local Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) waste dump site in Sri Lanka, be used in combination with agricultural waste, specifically rice residue be use as a source of energy in low energy consuming kiln. Local knowledge and skills to maintain and sustain production of the filters were also found to be fundamental to the sustainability of project and eventual attainment of the goal of the intervention. Hence, the clay-pot filter design and fabrication process incorporates knowledge of materials and pot making skills practice in Sri Lanka, as the NJIT team is privileged to have members who are native Sri Lankans. This is so important because finally the clay-pot filter production will be carried out by local people, who will also become the eventual beneficiary of the filter. Based on the expected water usage rate of 10 gallons per day per family and the proposed configuration of the filter, the desirable permeability of the filter was found to be 8.05×10-5 cm/sec. An experimental filtering test designed to check the performance and integrity of the fabricated clay-pot filter during its design life of one year, showed no detectable heavy metal concentration in the permeate during the test period for the filter design with composition of 35% (w/w) sawdust and 65% (w/w) Kaolinite mixture with added 4% (w/w) Hematite. The test results show that the filter could maintain its performance and adsorb and filter out the heavy metal contaminants for more than 2 years of use, exceeding its design life of 1 year. The test parameters were chosen to mimic the maximum amount of cadmium concentration of 0.0007 mg/L recorded in Sri Lankan dry zones. This particular filter design with permeability value of 6.28×10-5 cm/sec was able to maintain a sufficient yield capacity to meet the day-to-day water needs of the families. It was also able to filter all the heavy metals. However, our design required the sawdust to be grinded to a smaller size and sieved to pass through US sieve #60, which is difficult to achieve in a developing nation. Hence, we propose to explore other innovative ways to achieve the desirable flow rate of 10 gallons per day by replacing sawdust with a mixture of coconut oil and soap (both are locally available and inexpensive).
Supplemental Keywords:
Pathogens, agriculture, fertilizer, heavy metal, pesticides, developing countries, sustainable development, adsorption, filtration, clay-pot filterRelevant Websites:
New Jersey Institute of Technology Exit
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.