First donation received – Building a large scale water filter prototype for East Africa

Jakob Drzazga (FML, ETH Zurich) and Christoph Kellenberger (Novamem LLC) have received a donation of 20'000 CHF for their project that aims to solve the drinking water problem in third world countries. A testing site has already been found too.

Enlarged view: Signboard of the Hospital Ya Olturumeti, Arusha, Tanzania
Signboard of the Hospital Ya Olturumeti, Arusha, Tanzania

Jakob Drzazga, a current master student in the FML, and Christoph Kellenberger from the FML spin-off external pageNovamem LLC are building a low-cost water purification system for small villages, institutions and shared households. They are taking advantage of the widespread “Afritanks”, which are used in the East African region. These reservoir containers with up to 10.000 liters capacity are situated on the rooftops of many buildings.  The idea is to use the water pressure gained through the height of the tank to filter the contaminated groundwater without external energy. This gravity driven filtration is achieved by the implementation of external pageDrinkPure membrane technology into a compact cassette system.

A testing site has already been found! The Hospitali Ya Olturumeti in Arusha, Tanzania is a hospital without access to clean water and will receive a prototype within this year (see image).

The ETH/Novamem project has currently received an initial donation of 20.000 CHF for further research and development by a private donor. Thank you very much!

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