Susan Murcott

Design for sustainable development--household drinking water filter for arsenic and pathogen treatment in Nepal.

In the last 20 years, the widespread adoption of shallow tubewells in Nepal Terai region enabled substantial improvement in access to water, but recent national water quality testing showed that 3% of these sources contain arsenic above the Nepali interim guideline of 50 μ g/L, and up to 60% contain unsafe microbial contamination. To combat this crisis, MIT, ENPHO and CAWST together researched, developed and implemented a household water treatment technology by applying an iterative, learning development framework. A pilot study comparing 3 technologies against technical, social, and economic criteria showed that the KanchanTM Arsenic Filter (KAF) is the most promising technology for Nepal. A two-year technical and social evaluation of over 1000 KAFs deployed in rural villages of Nepal determined that the KAF typically removes 85–90% arsenic, 90–95% iron, 80–95% turbidity, and 85–99% total coliforms. Then 83% of the households continued to use the filter after 1 year, mainly motivated by the clean appearance, improved taste, and reduced odour of the filtered water, as compared to the original water source. Although over 5,000 filters have been implemented in Nepal by January 2007, further research rooted in sustainable development is necessary to understand the technology diffusion and scale-up process, in order to expand access to safe water in the country and beyond.

Reconsidering 'appropriate technology': the effects of operating conditions on the bacterial removal performance of two household drinking-water filter systems

We examined the performance of two household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) systems, the Danvor plastic biosand filter and the Potters for Peace Filtron ceramic filter, under ideal as well as modified operating conditions using systematic and comparable measurements. The operating variables for the biosand filter were (i)?pause times between filtration runs, (ii)?water-dosing volumes and (iii)?the effluent volume at which a filtered water sample was collected. For the ceramic filter we examined overflow filtration versus standard filtration. We used the bacterial indicators of total coliforms and Escherichia coli to quantify microbiological removal. With the biosand filter, a 12?h pause time had significantly higher total coliform removal than a 36?h pause time at the 20?l collection point (79.1% versus 73.7%; p < 0.01) and borderline significance at the 10?l collection point (81.0% versus 78.3%; p = 0.07). High-volume filtration (20?l) had significantly lower total coliform removal efficacy than low-volume (10?l) filtration at the 10?l collection point (81.0% versus 84.2%; p = 0.03). We observed a decreasing trend in total coliform removal by sample collection volume with the highest removal efficacy at the 5?l sample collection point (versus at the 10 and 20?l collection points). Using the ceramic filter, mean total coliform and E. coli removal were significantly lower (p < 0.01) in overflow filtration than in standard filtration. The findings indicate that operating conditions can reduce the effectiveness of the systems in a field-based setting and increase environmental risk exposure.

A holistic optimization framework for improving ceramic pot filter performance

Ceramic pot filters (CPFs) are a promising low-cost option for household water treatment, providing a barrier of protection against microbiological contaminants for households with or without reliable piped water supplies. However, as an open-source design, performance of CPFs is not standard across manufacturers and at times can be suboptimal. Furthermore, no scientific study has provided a holistic framework for optimizing filter performance. The goal of this paper is to provide CPF manufacturers with tools to increase their ability to reach performance objectives for flow rate, bacteria removal and strength. This goal is achieved by experimentally determining relationships between performance and three manufacturing parameters: percentage rice husk, rice husk size and wall thickness. These results are translated into design and manufacturing recommendations, which are as follows: 1) tightly control rice husk size to maintain consistent flow rates; 2) maximize wall thickness within the constraints in order to improve bacteria removal; 3) seek alternative methods of increasing bacteria removal if removal levels greater than 2LRV are needed. To go further and provide a more quantitative and universal optimization framework, we then use the identified functional relationships between the manufacturing parameters and filter performance to formulate a single-criterion optimization. This framework enables manufacturers to determine an ideal combination of manufacturing parameters based on the specific situation of each manufacturing site. The systematic approach to CPF design presented in this paper can be further extended to address additional manufacturing parameters and aspects of filter performance to further improve the CPF design. This work has huge potential to better serve the many people around the world who lack safe drinking water.

Arsenic Solutions Web platform of >50 options for developing countries: collaborative, design and innovation for the common good.

Publisher Summary Knowledge of the extent of arsenic (As) occurrence and its effect on public health has not kept pace with remediation efforts. A first step to action is to know the alternatives. The approach is to combine a knowledge base and a collaborative design platform. Today, new technologies are needed to meet the basic human need for safe, clean drinking water for those in the global community who lack this fundamental security and sufficiency. While these new technologies are primarily intended to provide water for health as a basic human right, and only secondarily for industrial, military, or commercial objectives, they certainly contribute to our well-being and security.

D-Lab and MIT IDEAS Global Challenge: Lessons in Mentoring, Transdisciplinarity and Real World Engineering for Sustainable Development

This paper reflects on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s D-Lab and IDEAS Global Challenge pedagogy over the past 14 years (2002–2015). The MIT IDEAS Global Challenge, a program of the MIT Public Service Center, is an annual invention and entrepreneurship competition that awards up to

Real world research in product evaluation and sustainabable development to reach scale

10,000 per MIT team for innovations and service projects that positively impact underserved communities. IDEAS student teams work with a community partner on projects that are designed to improve the quality of life globally. Since its founding in 2002, IDEAS has awarded more than

Arsenic Contamination in the World: An International Sourcebook 2012

600,000 to 132 teams. D-Lab Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Environmental Innovations for the Common Good (D-Lab WASH + ENV) is a MIT course offered for the past 10 years within a curriculum of over 20 D-Lab classes in international development. This author has mentored several hundred student teams that have entered the IDEAS Global Challenge, mostly through this course D-Lab WASH + ENV, including 26 winning teams. Eighty-one percent of these IDEAS winning teams have been led by women students. This is a model of the kind of program that can bring gender parity to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines while nurturing the “whole student.” In common with the wider family of D-Lab courses, the D-Lab-WASH + ENV course is structured around experiential learning and real-world engineering. This paper links the Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD) conference themes with the D-Lab/IDEAS pedagogy in terms of key concepts: mentoring, transdisciplinarity and real world engineering. It ends with challenges and recommendations.

Chapter 34 – “Arsenic Solutions” Web platform of >50 options for developing countries: Collaborative design and innovation for the common good

Low-income consumers aspire to a better life that humanitarian products offer. International aid agencies, non-governmental organizations, governments and social entrepreneurs promote and disseminate millions of products to alleviate poverty. But many of these products fail to deliver -either to perform consistently, or if they survive in the marketplace, they fail to reach scale. Preconditions to impact, sustained use and scale are rigorous product evaluations that are trusted, affordable and comprehensible. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched the Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (MIT-CITE), a five-year USAID-funded project to develop a methodology, called the “3S’s” which has guided the 2014 CITE Household Water Filter (HWF) Evaluation in Ahmedabad, India. Three expert sub-groups investigated different dimensions of the HWF product ecosystem: • Suitability (S1) Team • S1-Lab: Technical Performance at Consumer Reports in Yonkers, New York. • S1-India: Technical Performance of water filters in Ahmedabad, India households • Scalability Team – evaluation of the commercial HWF product supply chain and capacity to scale up in India based on availability, affordability and aftermarket indicators. • Sustainability Team – integrating social, economic, behavioral and product usability criteria. Findings and Lessons Learned: CITE developed a decision support tool for users and institutional purchasers of HWF products targeted to low-income consumers. Using a methodology patterned after Consumer Reports, we have done a comparative, multi-objective evaluation of more than 100+ HWF products in Ahmedabad. Results cover three product categories: particle removal filters, gravity non-electric water filters and reverse osmosis systems. Findings are discussed.

Method of drinking water treatment with natural cationic polymers

Executive Summary, African Region, Region of the Americas, Asia Region, European Region, Region of Australia and Oceania.

The role of physical-chemical wastewater treatment in the mega-cities of the developing world

Publisher Summary Knowledge of the extent of arsenic (As) occurrence and its effect on public health has not kept pace with remediation efforts. A first step to action is to know the alternatives. The approach is to combine a knowledge base and a collaborative design platform. Today, new technologies are needed to meet the basic human need for safe, clean drinking water for those in the global community who lack this fundamental security and sufficiency. While these new technologies are primarily intended to provide water for health as a basic human right, and only secondarily for industrial, military, or commercial objectives, they certainly contribute to our well-being and security.