Recommendations for Honduran Communities that are Experiencing Flow Restriction Problems in the Chlorine Feed System

Recommendations for Honduran Communities that are Experiencing Flow Restriction Problems in the Chlorine Feed System

1) Safety: I understand that priorities are different in the Honduran culture, and safety is not always the number one issue, but I think as a whole the number one thing that we could pass along to Honduran communities is education about health and safety. This would not be limited to the health advantages of safe drinking water, but also comprise of the advantages of working together to meet theses public needs in a safe and compassionate way. Aguaclara should be very active in encouraging that operators take steps to protect themselves when dealing with chemicals like aluminum sulfate and especially calcium hypochlorite. This would include always wearing rubber gloves and being in a very well ventilated area when mixing the chemicals and performing the mixing in short intervals so as to not be exposed to the chemical for long periods of time. It may even go as far as encouraging the use of some type of breathing apparatus.

2) Initial Settling and Filtration: The fist action that all communities that are having a flow controller device(FCD) restriction of flow problem should be to mix the calcium hypochlorite(Ca(ClO)3 solution in a container that has a volume great enough to dissolve all Ca(ClO)3 into solution, which can be determined from Figure 1 or from the attached Mathcad program on the Aguaclara wiki titled Volume of Water Required to Completely Dissolve a Concentration of Ca(ClO)2.

precipitation.bmp