"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink," wrote the poet Coleridge at the end of the 18th century — a sentiment that still describes the situation of some 900 million people who lack access to drinking water. A filtration system that uses membranes from Siemens is helping to improve things.
A high-speed, electric version of the SkyHydrant, the AquaVendor has a flow rate of 25,000 liters per day.
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Although almost three-fourths of the Earth is covered with water, only 0.3 percent of all water reserves are suitable for drinking. Worse yet, the World Health Organization estimates that around 1.8 million people die each year of diarrhea-related illnesses caused by contaminated water.
Mercy Nyambura (below) is very familiar with this problem. She is a student in Kilimambogo, a village located 60 kilometers from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Just a few years ago, she had no choice but to drink the contaminated water of the nearby Thika river. As a result, she had to go to the hospital innumerable times and missed school on many occasions. It was an intolerable situation, yet by no means an insurmountable one. Indeed, a solution for people like Mercy has been developed by Rhett Butler from Siemens Water Technologies in Sydney, Australia. Several years ago, Butler developed the SkyHydrant, a small, mobile water treatment system (see Pictures of the Future, Fall 2008, Hope on Tap). Moved by the desire to improve people’s quality of life, in 2005 he founded SkyJuice, a non-profit organization. Its goal is to form local partnerships in order to make SkyHydrants better known in rural areas as well as in cities. Today, 900 units are in operation in 42 countries. A single SkyHydrant can accommodate the drinking water needs of a community of up to 1,000 inhabitants.
Together with SkyJuice, the Global Nature Fund, and PureFlow — a local partner — in 2010 the Siemens Foundation set up two safewater kiosks in Mercy’s home country. At these small water filling stations, SkyHydrants transform contaminated water into a pure beverage that costs only three cents per canister. “Impurewater can drive people from villages into cities — something our project in Kenya is designed to prevent,” says Ulrike Wahl, Chief Operating Officer of the Siemens Foundation.
The Foundation’s long-term goal is to turn Sky-Hydrant water supply stations into micro-businesses. “The drinking water doesn’t have to be offered for free. PureFlow trains water committees, which operate and service the kiosks,” says Wahl. The proceeds provide employees with a little income, which ensures the kiosks remain viable and provides the village economy with a future.
At the heart of the safe water kiosks are four 1.5-meter-long SkyHydrants, each of which weighs 16 kilograms and looks like a medium-sized organ pipe. Inside each pipe is a filter consisting of 10,000 hair-thin membrane fibers with tiny pores that act like a sieve. “River water is fed into a tank, from which the head pressure causes it to flow through the membrane filters without requiring any electrical energy,” explains Project Manager Christine Weyrich from the Siemens Foundation. “The filters remove all of the suspended particles, bacteria and viruses from the water. If required, the equipment can be disinfected with citric acid; chemical agents are not required.”
Two filters are installed in each kiosk, usually a small stone building. “This protects the filter sand the purified water from the effects of sunlight and dirt,” says Weyrich. Such a “water factory” with two units can produce around 20,000 liters of clean drinking water per day. Four SkyHydrants can thus supply enough water for more than 2,000 residents. Villagers come to the kiosks with their 20-liter canisters whenever they need water, which they can obtain for only three cents. “The SkyHydrants even allow us to save money,” says Mercy. “The money my mother used to spend on medications can now be used to pay for my schooling and will enable me to become a nurse when I grow up.”
This example from Kenya shows how closely social development is tied to the supply of water. “Low water quality negatively impacts people’s educational opportunities, destroys the ecosystem, and causes rural flight,” says Butler. Cities generally have water treatment plants for potable water, but the technology is by no means simple and is therefore often beyond the means of communities in developing countries and emerging markets. In addition, urban infrastructures are becoming increasingly overloaded due to rapid population growth.
Decentralized, autonomous technologies are therefore a good alternative here. That’s why SkyJuice also wants to work together with partners such as Rotary International and Oxfam to set up SkyHydrants in cities throughout the world. This movement has already achieved considerable success, as the “small organ pipe” is now used in many hospitals, schools and slums in developing countries. “SkyHydrants are already being used in major cities in Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Cambodia, and Nepal,” says Butler. “But there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Automatic Filtration. Butler lives up to his promises, and he and his team have further developed the SkyHydrant over the past nine months. The result is the “AquaVendor,” which runs on the same principle as its sophisticated predecessor and also uses the same membrane fibers. The difference is that the system no longer needs to be operated manually. Instead, a small control device operates the AquaVendor, making the filtration and purification processes fully automatic.
The system is also cleaned fully automatically every 20 to 30 minutes by a small blower that injects air into the filter in order to remove any residue caught in the membranes. The space-saving device can produce up to 25,000 liters of drinking water per day, which is more than twice as much water as the SkyHydrant can manage.
The only thing that’s needed for the Aqua- Vendor is a power socket — everything else runs fully automatically and requires a minimal amount of maintenance. According to Butler, the portable water treatment plant is ideal for residential buildings, small urban water co-operatives and small volume industrial users. “It could be installed in every hotel or multi-family home in India and China — just imagine the possibilities,” says Butler. “You could transform rainwater that has been collected on rooftops into valuable drinking water.” And at a price of $7,000, the units would also be affordable, says Butler. The new water treatment system is currently being refined in Sydney before it make its way into thirsty markets throughout the developing world.