First year engineering students at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have been inspired by Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to design a centrifugal ceramic water filtration system powered by a bicycle.
The aspiring engineers at the UTS Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology undertook the EWB Challenge from the not-for-profit organisation, a program for first-year engineering students, aiming to deliver innovative solutions to real-world problems.
According to the Subject Coordinator for Engineering Communication, Sally Inchbold-Busby, the EWB Challenge disrupts the stereotypes of what engineers do.
“The students often come to university having a stereotypical idea of what an engineer is, and that’s often technology based," Inchbold-Busby explained. "This project allows students, working in groups, to think outside of technology and about the social implications of what they do."
This year, the EWB design brief focused on the community of Mayukwayukwa in Zambia. The students targeted water supply in the community, as the area has high levels of iron oxide and bacteria in the water, which bio-accumulates over time.
Additionally, the community is only equipped with a basic ball pump for pumping the water out, making it a very labour-intensive operation. For example, nurses and staff from the medical centre are spending a great portion of their time pumping water out for the hospitals.
The centrifugal ceramic water filtration system designed by the students utilises a bicycle attachment, which replaces the hand-powered pump with a less strenuous mechanism. The system not only allows more efficient pumping of water out of the bore, but also incorporates a centrifuge that pushes the water through various filters, producing clean and filtered water.
While the Mayukwayukwa currently utilises a gravity-driven filter, it takes one hour to filter three litres of water. The students' design would make three litres of filtered water in just seven minutes.
A particular focus for the students was to create a culturally appropriate solution. The community has to connect to the solution socially and culturally, to ensure its effective use, and additionally, the solution has to be cost-effective and easily implemented.
The EWB program is a competition, so if the project is selected as the most successful and appropriate project, there is a chance their design will be implemented in the community.