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A series of shortcomings has prevented municipal water treatment plants from becoming an effective tool for meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The lack of empirical experience or a theoretical basis for the design of small scale (communities less than 50,000) hydraulic flocculators has forced a reliance on simplistic designs using electric power. No technology has been available for gravity powered dosing systems that could be calibrated and easily used to deliver chlorine and aluminum sulfate. Environmental process engineers have viewed each installation as a customized design and the resulting engineering costs easily exceed the construction costs for small water treatment plants.
The AguaClara team has addressed each of these shortcomings. The team has developed designs for hydraulic flocculators that are economical to construct. These designs are based on a combination of fundamental fluid mechanics as well as ongoing research. The team has invented a gravity powered flow control module that delivers a constant flow rate and that is adjusted simply by raising or lowering a flexible tube. The AguaClara team has committed to open source engineering (freely sharing all of our research findings and our design algorithms). Our strategy to reduce the engineering design costs is to both publish our design algorithms and create an automated, web-based, design tool that will enable partner organizations to obtain detailed design documentation including 3-D CAD drawings of an AguaClara plant that is customized to the size of local materials that will be used for construction. Although the AguaClara design process is sophisticated, the resulting designs appear deceptively simple and use components that can be repaired and replaced by the plant operators.
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