Author: rjm72

Proven Success

Many of the AguaClara innovations have been adopted for practical use. The vertical flow flocculators, shallow sedimentation tank designs, and flow controllers are in use in three of the AguaClara water treatment plants in Ojojona, Tamara, and Marcala Honduras that together serve approximately 11,000 people.

Inside the Tamara plant we see the vertical flow flocculators and sedimentation tanks

Future Outlook

Continued from Automated Design:
Since the creation of this prototype, one of the AguaClara teams has been developing the code to fully integrate the design algorithms with the drawing tools. This exercise has also forced the design teams to create robust algorithms for all plant dimensions. A prerelease version of the design tool is being used to design water treatment plants for the communities of Cuatro Comunidades (population 2000) and Gracias (population 10,000) Honduras. The team has already benefitted from the ability to rapidly design multiple plant layouts to make it easier to optimize the design.
The web based tool that will make it possible for the AguaClara team to deliver customized detailed designs for the water treatment plants at no charge is still under development. The goal is to provide user accounts where previous designs can be saved. The web based tool will email the CAD files, specifications, and materials lists to the user.

Improving drinking water quality through innovative research, knowledge transfer, open source engineering and design of sustainable, replicable water treatment systems.

AguaClara technology is able to provide designs for flow rates between 400 and 6000 L/min. We are working to expand this range in the future as we perfect our design tool. Our goal is to branch out into other countries in Latin America.
We will be ready to being delivering designs as of February 2009.

Contact Us

Website: http://aguaclara.cee.cornell.edu
AguaClara Director: Monroe Weber-Shirk mw24@cornell.edu (607) 255-8445

Tamara Water Treatment Plant

Flow Control

The flow controller technology is spreading in Honduras to replace the “floating orifice” and “falling head valve controlled” hypochlorinators that are used in thousands of community water supplies. SANAA, the Honduran national agency responsible for water and sanitation, is encouraging the application of these flow controllers as economical upgrades (less than $20 for the components) to improve the reliability of chlorination. The flow controllers are installed in the distribution tanks.
There are currently 8 flow controllers installed to control the chlorine dose in Honduran communities. Recently the Municipality of Mercedes contracted with Agua Para el Pueblo to purchase an additional 14 flow controllers as part of a project funded by the Swedish Cooperation ASDI (Agencia Sueca de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo).
We anticipate that the demand for these flow controllers will rapidly increase as communities learn about the technology. AguaClara recently shipped supplies for 50 flow controllers to Honduras in anticipation of the demand.

Flow Control Module regulating chlorine dose in distribution tank

Meeting Demand

The Marcala Facility was built by retrofitting a failed filtration plant.

Automated Design

The solution we proposing is to automate the design process so that the technology easily can be replicated using local materials and labor by organizations with construction and engineering expertise (private, not for profit, or governmental). Thus, the local economies will be strengthened and local organizations will be empowered to build the facilities.

Computer Generated Design of an AguaClara plant drawn by our automated tool

The challenge of providing detailed designs for different sizes of facilities using different dimensions of local materials for construction would normally seem impossible for a university engineering team. AguaClara anticipated this problem and created a proof-of-concept method that automatically connected the output from the design algorithms to 3-D CAD.

We estimate that globally over 1 million people live in communities with 1000 to 50,000 people and use piped turbid surface water that is not treated. If this demand is to be met over the next 10 years approximately 3 water treatment plants would need to be built daily. This does not include the added demand due to population growth and the need to replace aging infrastructure.