WA:Village Water Ozonization System

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Village Water Ozonization System


Summary

  • General Overview:

The Village Water Ozonization System (VWOS) team is a group of students, faculty, and professionals working to design, build, and implement a water purification system in Central American countries. We partner with community leaders, government officials, and non-profit organizations to develop technology that meets needs for water purification and is economically, environmentally, and culturally sustainable.

  • Educational Benefits:

We believe education is an essential part of empowering people to improve their lives. For that reason, we provide educational activities highlighting the importance of water purification to present to children in grades K-9.

Purpose statement

  • General Overview

The VWOS team has partnered with community leaders, government officials, and non-profit organizations in the state of Yoro, Honduras to develop water purification technology to meet the needs of these people in a economically, environmentally, and culturally sustainable manner. Through the camaraderie and common work of the team, the VWOS team intends to develop members' abilities and Christian character.

  • Partner Resource:

We are presently working with Forward Edge International to seek additional input on system development from new partner communities in Nicaragua.

Goals

  1. To develop and implement an economically, environmentally, and culturally sustainable water purification system to meet the needs of partnering communities.
  2. To develop and implement a solar power system to run VWOS.
  3. To develop and present training materials to empower partnering community leaders to operate and manage the technology implemented.
  4. To develop and present educational material to help children and adults in partnering communities understand the importance of water purification.
  5. To develop members' abilities and Christian character and to encourage servant leadership and vocational vision.

Description

The Village Water Ozonation system is a village scale water purification system that uses a combination of filtration and ozone injection to disinfect water. It is a batch system, meaning it processes up to 600 gallons at one time. The system uses ozone to disinfect drinking water. This approach has some key advantages over other methods of purification. For instance, ozone does not leave the unpleasant aftertaste that is typical of chemical addition methods such as chlorine or bromine. It provides a higher degree of purification than filtering alone, which yields higher quality drinking water for the users of the system.

It is comprised of two main loops: a filtration loop and a purification loop. The filtration loop is made up of four filters. The first in the series of filters for the system is a disk type irrigation filter; this will remove large pieces of debris down to 150μ. The next two filters in the series use Flowmatic Flow-Max Filter Cartridges of 50μ and 5μ sizes in that progression. These filters are pleated filters, and will remove a majority of the sediment from the water. The disk filter and both the sediment filters work by mechanical filtration of contaminants. Basically, any impurity in the water that is larger than the pore size in the filter will be caught in the filter. Increasingly smaller micron sizes were used in order to extend the life of each filter. That way, the smaller micron filter will not be clogged as quickly because the larger particles were removed by an earlier filter. Finally, the current system flows through two .5μ solid-block carbon filters in parallel to account for a pressure drop occurring across these filters. These carbon filters have pore sizes small enough to guarantee removal of cysts. Activated carbon filtration is widely recognized as one of the most effective ways to reduce organic matter in water. Carbon filters are very effective because of the high surface area given by its high porosity. Carbon filters are clogged easily with sediment and therefore the life can be improved by having a sediment filter earlier in the line (which our system does).

The purification loop is the final step in the process. The VWOS system currently also uses an Ozone Generator to split Oxygen (O2) atoms from the air to create Ozone (O3). The ozone is pulled into the system by use of a venturi. Ozone is capable of breaking down many organic and inorganic compounds found in ground water that can be harmful to humans. After filtration, ozone is added to the water to kill any remaining harmful compounds.

With a moderate supply of electricity, a VWOS system could be implemented in practically any community to provide a source of potable water. It has been designed to be low maintenance and simple to operate.

History

This team has its origins and knowledge base from what was originally an organization called

  • Water for the World:

Water for the World. A Water for the World team first worked in Guatemala in 2003. Water for the World eventually became part of the Water Group within the Collaboratory. When it became clear that safety issues could prevent continued work in Guatemala, a team was formed in the fall of 2005 out of a prayerful desire to continue working in Central America.

  • Medical Ministry International:

A second trip to Guatemala fell through and instead the team traveled to Honduras during the summer of 2006 after initiating contacts in Honduras with Melvin Tejada from a Medical Ministry International (MMI) health clinic. The purpose of the Honduras trip 2006 was to build relationships with the new contacts and gather information about possible future projects in that region. Two main needs were identified: water purification for the MMI health clinic and the development of a larger system for use in nearby villages. During the 2006-2007 school year a commercial reverse osmosis (RO) system was purchased for the health clinic. A senior project team, with Water Group members' assistance, worked on developing a prototype ozone purification system for the villages.

  • Additional Site Trips:
    • The summer 2007 Honduras trip installed the reverse osmosis system in the clinic and demonstrated the village ozone system while providing water purification education to local children. During the 2007-2008 school year, further development was made on the ozone purification system which was named the Village Water Ozonization System (VWOS).
    • The summer 2008 Honduras trip demonstrated the improvements made to VWOS, continued educational programs in the schools, checked on the RO system in the MMI clinic, assessed the cost and availability of system parts in Honduras, and visited a similar system designed by Living Waters for the World (LWW).

Site Teams

Honduras Trip 2006

Honduras Trip 2007

Honduras Trip 2008

Honduras Trip 2009

Team

Our current team members include:

We can always use new members to help.

Our past team members include:

Resources

Current Project Planning Articles and Proposals

See the VWOS Project Management Page

Partners

Documentation

Past Project Planning Articles, Past Proposals and other documentation can be found in the following link:

VWOS Project Management Page

Contact Information

For more information about this project, please contact:

Eric Kauffman at ek1225@messiah.edu

Tim Yoder at ty2156@messiah.edu

Ariela Vader at AVader@messiah.edu

Water Group at collabwater@messiah.edu

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