Program-Wide Workshop in Honduras Brings Operators and Water Boards Together

On Saturday, August 25th Agua Para el Pueblo put on the first program-wide workshop on AguaClara technology. Plant operators and representatives of the water boards from Támara, Cuatro Comunidades, Marcala, Alauca, and Agalteca converged at the new plant in Atima, Santa Bárbara to review the fundamentals of plant operation, see the evolution of the AguaClara technology since the construction of their respective plants, and share experiences.

Fall 2012 Challenges Posted

Research challenges for Fall 2012 have been posted on our wiki.

Each semester, the AguaClara team is divided into subteams that tackle the research, design, and development challenges posed in these documents. Quarterly reports on individual pages document each team's progress (i.e., Demo Plant). Check back at mid-semester for updates, or follow our progress on Twitter: @CUAguaClara.

The Floc Blanket Quest

AguaClara has a mission of creating high quality safe drinking water using sustainable, low cost water treatment plants. Since 2008, we have been researching and attempting to add floc blankets to our suite of safe drinking water technologies. A floc blanket is a fluidized bed of flocs that are maintained in the bottom of an upflow sedimentation tank. It looks like a snow globe with too much snow. The highly concentrated suspension acts like a filter (or flocculator) that intercepts incoming clay particles and thus reduces the turbidity of the settled water. The performance improvement created by a floc blanket can be quite dramatic. The settled water turbidity can be reduced by a factor of 10, for example, from 3 NTU to 0.3 NTU. Our goal was to add the floc blanket without significantly increasing the cost of an AguaClara plant. Last week Drew Hart confirmed that we have floc blankets at the new AguaClara plant in Atima! The water in the top of the sedimentation tanks is crystal clear!

Announcing a New Open Data Project

Our new SMS-based data reporting program is in its pilot stage in Honduras

Lack of reliable, up-to-date data on critical infrastructure has always been a serious roadblock in the path of development. Anecdotes might make great PR pieces, but ultimately decisions - which program to fund, which technology to employ, which community's technicians need training - are based on data. A dearth of trustworthy data makes planning more difficult and more arbitrary, with unpredictable results.