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The Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems

$75,000 Award Means Continued Progress Toward Safe Water for Guatemalan Village

Winning a $75,000 award from the Environmental Protection Agency's 2010 P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability will enable WaterCAMPWS student members of Engineers Without Borders at UIUC (EWB-UIUC) to continue work aimed at improving access to safe, clean water for an indigenous Mayan community in Guatemala. The P3 award competition and National Sustainable Design Expo was held at the Environmental Protection Agency's 40th anniversary celebration of Earth Day on April 23-26, 2010.

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In Socorro, Guatemala, the water for most homes is piped in from the Chichoy River, which is contaminated with human waste from the village. As a result, Socorro's 450 residents live under the constant threat of illnesses including diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, and giardiasis. After being contacted by Wuqu'Kawoq, a non-profit medical NGO working with the indigenous people of Guatemala, EWB-UIUC used a $10,000 P3 Phase I Award to determine that the most effective remediation option for the village was point-of-use biosand filters installed in individual homes and to begin implementation and research into virus removal utilizing iron oxides in the filters. EWB-UIUC also trained two social workers on sanitary and hygienic practices including the disposal of waste, hand washing techniques, procedure to boil water, biosand filter maintenance and use, and proper storage of clean water.

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The $75,000 P3 Phase II Award for Virus Removal in Slow Sand Filters for Rural Mayan Communities will enable this work to continue. Based on previous work, students will implement community-constructed concrete biosand filters that incorporate the addition of iron oxides to the sand media in order to remove viruses from the drinking water. A comprehensive sustainability program, which includes an educational component for participating students and the local community, is also a significant part of the project. The water system is built with local materials and designed so that the residents of Socorro will not have to rely on outside help for its operation.

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Diverse, interdisciplinary skills are helping the Guatemala project to succeed: Than H. (Helen) Nguyen, the team's advisor and Principal Investigator, is a UI civil engineering professor and a WaterCAMPWS faculty member. Students are from the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Physics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Environmental Geology and Spanish. Many of the students are also members of WaterCAMPWS, which has supported both phases of the project.

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"I am extremely proud of the students," said Nguyen. "The research and education activities are driven by students, who have been volunteering their time and effort to do the research. I believe that they have learned so much throughout the process. There is no class experience that can be compared with learning through doing.

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Peter Maraccini, a member of the EWB-UIUC team and a WaterCAMPWS engineering student, said: "With the EPA P3 Phase II award, we will extend our research to better shape the modified biosand filter to the needs of the people of Socorro. Yet the benefits may go far beyond Socorro. We hope this new technology may eventually help the over 3 million current users of biosand filters to improve the quality of their drinking water and their lives."

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This year, two teams of University of Illinois students received P3 Awards. Engineering students from WaterCAMPWS were on both teams, creating a total of six P3 Awards won by WaterCAMPWS students over the past three years for their work with communities in India, Guatemala, Nigeria and the United States.