09 January 2013

AguaClara in Honduras: Day 5

Greetings from Atima, Honduras!

It is now Day 5 of our trek through Honduras and we are currently in Atima in the region of Santa Barbara visiting our most recently finished AguaClara plant. We spent the first few days at Lago Yojoa where we familiarized ourselves with the surrounding area and took a look at a potential site for an AguaClara plant.

Monroe Weber-Shirk tweaking the miniature plant which will be used by Agua Para el  Pueblo (APP) to demonstrate our technology to candidate communities for treatment plants.
Right now at the Atima plant, we are assembling demo versions of the Low-Flow Stacked Rapid Sand Filter (LF-SRSF) and Foam Filter, and we have put together our demo plant (which stayed intact through the flight!) and is now functioning properly! Yesterday the operators of the plants showed us how they disassemble and clean the sedimentation tank and allowed us to climb inside and see how the floc hopper is constructed at full scale. Ethan Yen '15 says, "It was nice to see how easy it was to take apart and put back together...especially when the floc hopper gets clogged...and the floc hopper was a lot smaller than I thought it would be."

Coming and seeing the plant painted a full picture of how our research back in Ithaca is implemented in our plants. In tandem with speaking to our host family, I can now see how our work is actively affecting peoples' lives in real communities.

We'll be updating as often as we can, so keep a lookout for any new posts! For now, here's a picture of the current assembling of the LF-SRSF.
Frances Ciolino, M.Eng. '13

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