Draft proposal (last revised on 08/15/2006)

Sustainable Small-Scale Water Supplies

Design and analysis of small scale systems that are appropriate for providing safe drinking water to the 1 billion underserved. Students will work in teams to design sustainable supply and treatment systems. This will require an understanding of the major threats to public health as well as the constraints of implementing technologies in the Global South.

• Introduction
  • Our uneven knowledge base
  • Groupthink
  • Environmental Myths
• State of the planet: millennium goals
  • targets, indicators
  • biased reporting due to pressure to report success
  • The technology is well developed?
  • Technology needs

• Public health implications
  • Typhoid Myth and implications for public health
  • Waterborne disease mortality and morbidity
  • Contaminants: sediment, pathogens, arsenic, nitrate...
  • Consumption: quantity and quality requirements
  • Hygiene: quantity and quality requirements

Unit processes

• Flow control and flow measurement
• Coagulation/flocculation/sedimentation
• Filtration
  • Rapid sand
  • Slow sand
  • BioSand
  • Multistage Sand
  • Ceramic filters
• Disinfection
  • Chlorine
  • Ultraviolet light
  • SODIS
• Storage
  • CDC safe water

Rubric for selecting Unit Processes

• Data requirements
• Process order
• If you have to make choices...

Treatment trains (combined unit processes)

• Batch vs. continuous flow
• Flow control
• Material selection
• Maintenance
• Monitoring

Gravity rural water supply design

• Data sources
  • GPS and traditional surveying techniques
  • GIS
• Pipeline design
  • Controls
  • Transients
  • Pipe diameter selection algorithm
• Distribution system

Reflections

• Requirements for sustainability
  • Technology
  • Social sustainability or “soft skills”
  • Finance/business models
  • Management/ownership
  • Gender
• Development path of the Global South
  • The challenge of moving to a new sustainable stage
  • Case study: Ojojona Honduras
    • meters
    • low flow toilets
    • rate structure
    • chlorination
    • bottled water vs. POU vs. Community
• Private sector, Public sector, Universities
  • Incentives for creating new knowledge and better processes
  • R&D Role of the University
  • Passing on knowledge to the next generation