Rama Cay Health Center Receives Solar-Powered Water Filtration System

By Casey Callais -- The drinking water in the tiny island of Rama Cay is dirty. Very dirty. And not in the sense that it can be cleaned by simply scooping out pollutants with a sieve. Much of what contaminates open well drinking water can not be seen by the naked eye; fecal coliforms cannot be scooped out. Neither can protozoa or the many other contaminates, which populate the 5 wells that the 1,000 residents of Rama Cay use for washing, bathing and drinking. Diarrhea is a serious problem (you can hear Maria, the nurse in Rama Cay explain why here) and the population most vulnerable to such contamination rely heavily on the well at the Rama Cay health clinic.

To tackle this problem, blueEnergy engineers devised a clever solution that weds the organization's experience with solar power and biosand water filtration to create, you guessed it, a solar-powered biosand water filter!

With funding from Renewable World, blueEnergy designed and installed a system that pumps water from the clinic's well to a holding tank that then drips into a biosand filter and from there into a holding tank. The system is controlled by a series of float valves that allow water to pass until the tank is full.

Here is an example of the system:

 

1. The solar panel on the roof of the health clinic powers the electric pump in the well.

2. The submersible pump is controlled by a float switch in the top tank. When the float is down and the sun is out, the pump sends well water into the top tank until the float comes up and cuts the pump off. 

3. There is enough well water in the top tank for several days of the clinic's water requirements. Gravity draws water from the top tank to the filter.

4. Water drips into into the biosand filter at a slow rate giving the good bacteria a consistent supply of bad bacteria to munch on. The water filters down through the barrel of sand and into the clean water storage tank.

5. Clean water is stored in the lower tank which is still high enough to supply water pressure to the clinic.

6. Patients in the health clinic can drink clean water and the staff can work in more sanitary conditions.

No longer is there worry at the health clinic over contaminated water and the sickness that it brings. This installation provides the solution and represents the strong bond between the indigenous community of Rama Cay, blueEnergy and Renewable World.

Intern Experience Firsthand: Sam Rhoads

By Sam Rhoads -- I arrived in Bluefields Nicaragua in the end of May to begin a two months study abroad program for my university. The study abroad program was at the Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University (BICU) where I studied Spanish in the afternoon. I came across blueEnergy because I was looking for some work that I could do or somewhere that I could help out in the mornings when I did not have class. Many people that I met from Bluefields mentioned blueEnergy to me during conversations, and the work they do in the area aroused my interest. So, I headed to the blueEnergy office to inquire about working with them for my two months in Bluefields as a sort of volunteer intern. The wonderful workforce at blueEnergy was very accommodating, and they found work for me with their Water and Sanitation team.

My work with the Water and Sanitation team involved a number of different projects. Some of these projects included: constructing water filters with the beneficiaries, carrying the filters to beneficiaries’ homes, providing training on the usage and maintenance of the filters, performing follow-up surveys to ensure proper usage of the filters, testing water samples of filtered and unfiltered water to ensure that the filters work, assisting with the drilling of water wells, and much more. Besides being very interesting work, learning a lot about the construction process of water filters and well drilling and construction, I also found the work very meaningful. Each day beneficiaries came to help with the construction of the filters; this gave them the sense of responsibility and ownership over the filters. It was incredible to see how inspired they were to come work on their filters. The looks of satisfaction and happiness on the faces of beneficiaries when we delivered and installed the finished product at their houses gave the work more significance. The same went for drilling the wells. Well drilling is arduous work, but every day without fail, rain or shine, the beneficiaries would be there with smiles on their faces - working away to help finish their well.

Sam talking about his time with blueEnergy

Living in Bluefields and working with blueEnergy for the past two months has been a very significant time for me. I have learned a lot, and it has definitely helped to shape the way I think, live, and what I will do in the future. It was great to be able to provide people with a basic amenity that many of us in the United States and other more privileged countries take for granted: clean drinking water. For thousands of people in Nicaragua (and many other countries around the globe), clean drinking water is something that they don’t have. This time that I spent working with blueEnergy has reinforced my desire to find a way to use my civil engineering degree when I am done with school to help provide less privileged people then myself with services and facilities that are necessary for living. Working with blueEnergy has been a great privilege for me and is a time that I will never forget.

Intern alumni teaching what she learned with blueEnergy

By Ashley Ciglar -- Engineers Without Borders USA, Santa Clara University Student Chapter is implementing a bio-sand filter pilot project in northern Honduras in a rural village called El Pital. The project will help determine if in-house or community wide potable water treatment will be used for a community water distribution system.

 In August/September 2012 a group Santa Clara University students and professional mentors will travel to El Pital to teach community members how to use and maintain bio-sand filters that were donated to community members by Rotary International two years prior. Nearly all the community members who have a bio-sand filter don’t use it properly resulting in a fear to use them. Students will teach members of the community water board how to use the filters in their household. The water board members will then be required to teach another family how to use the water filter and those families will teach another until all families in El Pital have been trained. Students will visit annually and communicate through email periodically to monitor the project. Additionally, community workshops about health, hygiene, sanitation, and the water cycle will be taught. 

EWB and water board members from the community of El Pital standing in front of the water tank

The current president of the Santa Clara University Student Chapter, Ashley Ciglar, first learned about bio-sand filters when she volunteered for blueEnergy in June/July 2010. This previous experience with bio-sand filters led to Ashley's idea of the pilot project for the chapter. Find out more about the SCU chapter of Engineers Without Borders at www.scu.edu/ewb.

Ashley (far left) and other bE interns with family in Rama Cay

Implementing water filters, but how well do they work?

By Jayne Richards -- Household biosand water filters form a core component of blueEnergy’s water and sanitation program and almost 200 filters have been installed in Bluefields and surrounding communities in the Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur (RAAS) over the last three years. These filters definitely work in laboratory trials and have been proven to work in various studies abroad. But how effective are these filters in Bluefields, and are blueEnergy’s beneficiaries actually using them properly?

These are some of the questions that blueEnergy’s Vladymir Pao and Jayne Richards are currently trying to answer.

Jayne interviewing a beneficiary in Kahkabila about the use and maintenance of his biosand filter

For the past three months Vladymir and Jayne have been visiting blueEnergy’s biosand water filter beneficiaries to study the social uptake and use of the filters as well as their filtration efficiency. The project forms an important part of the follow up of the Water and Sanitation Team’s work and is funded by Christadelphian Meal a Day. The project includes detailed surveys to determine the use, maintenance and perception of the filters, as well as water quality analysis to determine their technical efficiency.

Vladymir, originally from Bonanza in the north-east of Nicaragua, and a graduate of Ecology from the Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University (BICU), runs the social component of blueEnergy’s Water and Sanitation Program. Jayne, an Environmental Engineer from Australia has been volunteering in the Water and Sanitation Team since November 2011, working on this project as well as blueEnergy’s sanitation program.

Vladymir and incubated water samples from Bluefields

To date, the study has found that the groundwater wells in Bluefields typically have very high levels of faecal coliform contamination. This indicates contamination from latrines or animal faeces and represents a risk to human health if consumed without treatment. The filtered water has typically been found to have zero, or a very low level of contamination, even when there is significant contamination in the source water, thus providing a safe drinking water source for our beneficiaries.

“This study is very useful to blueEnergy," says Vladymir. "It will provide us with extensive baseline data on the distribution and severity of groundwater contamination in Bluefields and two surrounding communities, as well as a greater understanding of what our beneficiaries think of their filters and how they are actually using them. The results of the water quality analysis also allow us to tell our beneficiaries with confidence that their filters are working very effectively and give them more confidence in the technology."

“In Bluefields," Jayne says, "we are finding that the filters are very effective at treating contaminated water but we are also finding some cases of re-contamination after the filtration. This re-contamination is likely due to poor hygiene practices, and highlights the need to continue to promote important hygiene messages during follow up visits after the beneficiary’s initial training session.”

Vladymir and Jayne counting the bacterial colonies in incubated water samples

The project has also enabled blueEnergy to purchase a high quality mobile microbial and physico–chemical water testing kit. This kit will be useful for a range of the Water and Sanitation team’s projects, including testing the water quality from our Baptist wells, biosand water filters as well as water quality testing in remote communities.

Measuring the turbidity of filtered water in Kahkabila

The study will continue until late 2012 and is expected to provide blueEnergy with useful information on the most appropriate implementation model for future biosand filter projects as well as important technical data.

Stay tuned to BlueNews to find out the final results of this study later this year!

Bluefields Residents learn about Water, Sanitation and Hygiene!

By Angela Cacciola -- Often, children carry out hygienic or “good-for-you” acts under parental guidance. However, in marginalized communities where the majority of children nor their parents understand or have ritualized sanitary practices, few enforce them.

At blueEnergy Nicaragua, it is not enough to build and distribute biosand water filters. In order for successful, sustainable use of the filters, people must believe in their benefits for their effective use. Thus, those interested in obtaining a biosand water filter for their household must attend a “Water, Sanitation and Hygiene class,” and then spend time in the blueEnergy workshop building their filter with blueEnergy technicians. blueEnergy feels this investment of resources through time and new-found education makes the filters more valuable to the beneficiaries who receive them.

blueEnergy recently held a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene class led by water and sanitation team leader, Thibaut Demaegdt, and team technicians, Vladimir Pao, William Mendez and Jayne Richards. Below is a photo journal of the class given with some of the content attendees learn:

Jorge examines the booklet on water sanitation.

Attendee holding up a bottle that appears to have clean water.

The class comes up with various diseases and their contamination sources

Thibaut Demaegdt leading the class

Attendees building their own biosand water filters

Beneficiaries outside the blueEnergy workshop, ready to bring their filters home!

Rodriguez family in their home with the water filter they built!

A Passion for Clean Water in Bluefields: Alonso's Story

By Casey Callais -- It's been about four months since blueEnergy started working with families in barrio Santa Rosa in Bluefields. We already told you about Celia from Santa Rosa, now we would like to tell you about the head of another family who lives a block away.

Alonso Rodriguez and his family were some of the first beneficiaries of a biosand water filter and a baptist well in their neighborhood. They are very grateful; the water quality situation in their area is not a good one. "In this part of St Rosa, our wells dry up," said Alonso. "Thanks to blueEnergy we have solved our problem with water.”

The family and the water filter

The closest well that Alonso is referring to is owned by a neighbor but is used by the all of the surrounding houses. It is also at the end of a sidewalk where garbage is collected weekly for pickup. It is from this well that his family was drinking unfiltered water.

The well that Alonso was using before. Notice the garbage piled up in front.

He lives with his wife and two sons who were both born blind and with learning disabilities. She stays with the kids full time, he drives a taxi part time in the evenings. They share their house with another young family who also have two children. Water is abundant, but clean water is a valuable commodity. When asked about if his family had noticed a difference in the quality of water since their filter was installed back in June, he said they haven’t had stomach problems or skin breakouts due to the contaminated water. Because of this they feel safe and confident of the quality of their water.

Alonso and family with their filter

The neighbors and the Baptist well

Drilling the wells is a simple but time-consuming practice of lifting a boring pipe up and slamming it down into a water-filled hole, which shoots water and sediment through the end. After completion the wells are closed to prevent contaminants from entering the water supply from the top. They are also drilled at a considerably cheaper cost than the traditional open pit-style wells. Usually it takes about a week to drive it to the desired 70' - 80' depth. Though they are much narrower than traditional wells, they access the water table down to a much greater depth, allowing for a more sanitary water source away from contaminated ground water.

Neighbors from six houses contributed to boring the well in Alonso’s yard and will share it when they need water. Barbara Blandón lives one house over and has a small store that sells cold drinks. In the months when her well may be dry, she can rely on the Baptist well to make the frescoes (fruit juices) that she sells.

blueEnergy intern Andrew Peterson drilling the well with the locals

Alonso shows off the finished well

Alonso and the next step

Alonso's hard work during the building of the filter and well and his first-hand experience with the way blueEnergy executes projects on the community level has landed him a job working with blueEnergy's Water and Sanitation team.

According to Thibaut Demaegdt, head of the Water and Sanitation team, for future projects blueEnergy will have two groups drilling wells simultaneously. Because Alonso demonstrated a great work ethic during the drilling of the well at his house and was able to motivate the neighbors when the energy levels got low, he was the first choice as someone who could lead the second team.

Alonso on the left giving a thumbs up during a water team meeting

The future of the blueEnergy water team is a bright one, as is the future for the beneficiaries in Santa Rosa. And of course for Alonso and his family, the future couldn't be brighter.

Celia's family drinks clean water

By Casey Callais -- Celia and her family live in Santa Rosa neighborhood in Bluefields. Her husband works long hours as a taxi driver, her three kids are all in school and she works from home selling cooked beans.

Celia's house. Notice the contaminated well on the right.

Not having clean water is an inconvenience few people in developed countries have to face. For Celia's family, it has been a way of life. With no running water, they were having to haul buckets of water from a well in their backyard. When that became too contaminated to drink or even bathe with, they started using a communal well several blocks away which cost about $.50 per bucket. Unfortunately, the contamination levels in the communal well increase in the dry season as the water level decreases and eventually runs dry. Celia's family is an example of a typical Bluefield's household.

Celia washes her hands with well water stored in the green tub

The first part of blueEnergy's water program methodology is to give classes on sanitation and cleanliness. While sanitary conditions in a typical Bluefield's home are not ideal, a little soap can go a long way.

Thibaut helps Celia fill out the paperwork for the water filter

Celia worked with blueEnergy to build her own biosand water filter and drill a new Baptist well that is shared with several surrounding families.

Celia and her daughter showing off their water filter

Celia stand with her daughter in front of their new Baptist well

This year blueEnergy plans to help 200 households in Bluefields build and install their own filters. 30 of them will work to build shared Baptist wells. Check out our gallery to see more photos from the project!

bE innovations: Cement Vibrator

By Casey Callais -- Here is bE water technician Jorge Perez showing us how blueEnergy innovations are helping to increase the structural integrity of the biosand filters.

Link to: http://www.youtube.com/embed/KdacNR1rlXA

bE innovations: Electric Sand Sifter

By Casey Callais -- blueEnergy innovations help make it easier for beneficiaries to build their own biosand water filters. bE water technician Jorge Perez explains:

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/embed/EBpiP9O4SlQ

bE innovations: Sand drying rack

By Casey Callais -- blueEnergy water technician Jorge Perez describing the need and use of one of blueEnergy's latest innovations in the water program.

Link to: http://www.youtube.com/embed/TqnIRyiFSQc

bE innovations: Filter mold improvement

By Casey Callais -- bE water technician Jorge Perez explains one of the latest innovations in the water program. With 200+ water filters to build, the need for higher efficiency is very apparent.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/embed/TIhDktNf03o

Updates on the Bluefields water program

By Casey Callais -- The last six months have seen big changes brought to the blueEnergy water program and the local beneficiaries of our latest water projects.

Leoniza and her family with their water filter

A summary of our accomplishments so far, direct from the water program coordinator, Thibaut Demaegdt:

We have installed 34 filters. We have built a total of 77 filters built, so 43 are waiting to be installed. We also have drilled seven wells and the eighth is under construction. We have improved our working equipment (to make the construction process more efficient): We have a concrete mixer, concrete vibrator (to reduce air in the mix), electric sand sifter (of our own design), water recycling machine (to automate sand washing and reduce water consumption, also of our own design) and have built sand drying racks. We have certified approximately 100 families through our classes about water, sanitation and hygiene.

Alonso with the well he shares with 6 families

The plan is to build 200 water filters  and 30 wells in Bluefields, and we have nearly reached the halfway mark. We have contracted more water team technicians and have been given a larger space to work. This coupled with the aforementioned improvements, we hope to achieve our goal by December of this year.

Low-Tech Coconut Shell Activated Carbon Filter

By Ami Cobb and Mikell Warms -- We discovered our passion for water resource management, specifically water quality in the developing world, during our college career at Santa Clara University. As undergraduate engineering students, we were required to submit a senior design project highlighting our interests and the knowledge we gained during our four years of study. blueEnergy was introduced to us during this period, and as part of the senior design process, we had the incredible chance to visit Bluefields, Nicaragua in order to fulfill our project goals. Our project was a low-tech coconut shell activated carbon filter. Simply put, it’s like a Brita filter that can reduce pesticides, tastes, and odors in drinking water.

Mikell attacking the charcoal dilemma

Activated carbon in the United States is often produced using steam activation, a process that requires temperatures ranging from 900-1200˚C. It produces a high quality activated carbon, yet cannot be produced in places such as Bluefields or other remote developing locations. Through our research we found that chemical activation could be used to produce activated carbon at lowered temperatures of 300-500˚C. We also learned that coconut shells were the best carbon media that one could use to produce activated carbon, and since they are so abundant in Nicaragua, we were in luck! While in Bluefields, we burned coconut shells using the oil drum method, which is currently used to produce charcoal for cooking purposes, and then attempted to chemically activate them using calcium chloride, an inexpensive and readily available chemical in the United States. After a week and a half in Bluefields, we were finally successful using this technique. We knew that our carbon had in fact been properly activated by using methyl orange, a soluble organic chemical indicator. A reduction in the orange tint of a methyl orange solution, after it has been treated with the activated carbon, is a very positive indication that it will also reduce pesticides and other organics in the water. Since pesticides are insoluble, they have a greater affinity for activated carbon than a soluble organic chemical, such as methyl orange. Thus if our activated carbon could adsorb the methyl orange, it could adsorb pesticides at an even higher rate.

However, it was a bittersweet accomplishment since we understood that calcium chloride would probably not be found at the local market. In a desperate attempt to salvage the situation (and ingenious if we do say so ourselves), we tried sodium chloride (table salt) knowing that calcium chloride was also a salt. It’s cheap, readily available, and as we found out, another agent which can activate carbon! Once we returned to the labs at Santa Clara University, we did quantitative experimentations using a spectrophotometer and, as expected, found that it was not as good as the high quality carbon that is manufactured in the United States, but it was indeed successful and yielded comparable results to the charcoal activated with calcium chloride.

Ami filling the barrel with coconut shells

Although Bluefields was our pilot location, we hope that our activated carbon can eventually be applied in developing countries globally. At blueEnergy, we will probably be remembered best as the only volunteers to ever wash Cookie (a very old, slightly senile blueEnergy guard dog), but we hope our project will inspire people to filter their water in a simple and inexpensive fashion. Apart from making progress on our project in Bluefields, we had an unforgettable experience with the exciting culture and the new people, and we would like to thank all the employees and volunteers for helping out in any way and cheering us on. 

Thanks Ami and Mikell!

blueEnergy hosts Solar Energy International workshop

Wrapping up the end of the 2010, blueEnergy was proud to host a December workshop held by Solar Energy International (SEI). SEI is a non-profit leader in renewable energy education and training.

The six-day workshop was comprised of both lectures and hands-on work, as well as a trip to Kahkabila to help blueEnergy perform much-needed maintenance on the community's turbine installation.

The first several days were spent learning about blueEnergy, the communities we work in and the problems they face. The SEI group was given the opportunity to begin carving turbine blades and try their hand at winding stator coils. They also helped prepared the blades for Kahkabila's replacement turbine.

On the fourth day we brought the replacement turbine to the community of Kahkabila. The SEI team was set to change the old turbine to the upgraded blueDiamond 4 model, replace rusty guy wires and perform standard battery maintenance. Led by the blueEnergy's technical coordinator, Pedro Carvalho Neves, the SEI team worked all day for nearly three days, eating meals in shifts, and learning first-hand the challenges of working in communities in Nicaragua's Atlantic coast.

blueEnergy and Solar Energy International work to replace the turbine in Kahkabila

Kahkabila locals assist with replacing the tower sections

Tightening the nuts on the replacement blades 

After returning from the community, the SEI participants spent the last two days learning about other blueEnergy programs and worked to build a biosand water filter, as seen in the following video:

Both blueEnergy and the Solar Energy International participants throughly enjoyed the week-long workshop. It was a great opportunity to perform much-needed turbine maintenance with the advantage of so many helping hands, as well as a chance to educate about the needs of communities on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. 

SEI participants and blueEnergy volunteers in Kahkabila

Installing a water filter in the FADCANIC school in Pearl Lagoon

blueEnergy installs a biosand water filter at the FADCANIC school in Pearl Lagoon.