Projects on Water Treatment
Technology Transfer and Commercialization for Arsenic Removal
About the project:
In the Central Valley of California, a high concentration of arsenic gets into groundwater. Local treatment systems are unable to adequately remove enough of the geogenic contaminants for safe human consumption. Enter the Air Cathode Assisted Iron Electrocoagulation. The magic of electrochemistry makes arsenic-laden groundwater potable again. I was specifically involved in finding ways to market this technology, as well as find more information on licensing and permitting the technology for broad public use. I conducted potential user interviews as well as distributed a survey to determine potential price points for this technology. I also had the privilege of doing some field test work with the research and development team. For more on this project, please see this published news article: Bringing Arsenic-Safe Drinking Water to Rural California
Two photos below from the left: Sedimentation tank/sampling point 5 with sand filter, sampling point 6 with built-in sensor outlets.
Passive Chlorination for Kenya and Bangladesh
About the project:
A version 2 prototype of a novel venturi box needed some pre-field testing. This box was going to be used in schools and hospitals in Western Kenya. An international NGO served as a local partner.
I was specifically involved in building a testing apparatus in the lab (I’m on the right, holding a drill in the picture), and doing desk research for whether chlorination would be enough to treat the contamination from the local water sources. I also interviewed the NGO leadership to get a better sense of how this invention to be self-reliant for chlorine was going to solve a lot of the pain points from unreliable supply chains, and presented some of my findings about the technology deployment and treatment limitations at the Development Engineering student fair.
After I had stepped off the project, the principal investigator/co-inventor went to Kenya to do fieldwork with this box. For more on those results, please see this published article: Making Tap Water In Kenya and Bangladesh Safe To Drink
HelioVap: Household-level Desalination for Coastal Communities
About the project:
Using a novel, lab-developed material as a salination membrane, this project focused on re-designing the hardware to have a broader surface area and add a weight, to take advantage of surface volume and temperature change to get the most drinking water from the ocean.
I was the team project director, doing more administrative work in making sure we had productive meetings, submitted reports on time, and divided the work evenly.
Pumped Hydroelectric Power Generation and Storage
About the project:
One of the biggest challenges of water systems today lies in its interaction with the energy sector. Water treatment and distribution have high energy costs: many newer technologies such as nutrient removal from wastewater and desalination processes, for example, are widely known to use an extensive amount of energy.
I led a team that did a desktop research study on the Mokelumne Water Battery and how it would meet California’s renewable energy goals.
Conclusion: Hydropower is an all-or-nothing game. The capital expenditure as well as the emissions from construction, not to mention the environmental damage, warrant serious consideration by policy makers before committing to back hydropower projects that can take more than decades to complete. While hydropower has a lot of benefits, including increased capacity for energy storage, the long-term downsides of it are almost as extensive.
