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April 11, 2005 Vol. 76,
no. 12S
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| LOCAL
RESOURCES: ERG graduate students Micah Lang,
Forest Kaser and Fermin Reygadas look for UV Tube construction
materials at a local hardware store in Baja California Sur, Mexico.
The UV Tube is a research project to help purify water in rural
communities using locally available materials.
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Better water
in Baja
ERG
students bring UV-water purification to rural communities
Energy & Resources Group (ERG) graduate student Fermin Reygadas
grew up in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He witnessed firsthand how rural
communities suffer from unsafe local water. Children, in particular,
got sick, and families were forced to travel great distances to purchase
bottled water from cities.
Baja communities, says Reygadas, are "proud of their unique environment,
so it's sad when they have to depend on the cities. I wanted to help.
It's a very personal thing for me."
Reygadas kept his promise. He and ERG graduate colleagues Micah Lang
and Forest Kaser, along with Haas graduate student Margaret Rhee, applied
for and received an $18,600 fellowship to field-test UV water purification
units in 30 Baja homes for eight weeks this summer. The team will install
the devices and monitor how people like them over the next year. The
fellowship is courtesy of Berkeley's Management of Technology International
Research Fellowship Program.
This simple technology was developed at the Renewable and Appropriate
Energy Lab and tested at environmental engineering labs on campus. A
germicidal bulb - which is just like a regular fluorescent light minus
the white phosphor coating around the inside and constructed with quartz
instead of glass - is attached to the inside of a
PVC pipe. Water passing through the pipe and under the germicidal bulb
is dosed with twice as much UV radiation as most national and international
standards require. The DNA of pathogens is severely damaged by the ultraviolet
radiation, resulting in clean water with no disinfection byproducts
or unpleasant taste.
The technology has been around for a long time, Reygadas explains. But
for the last few years, Berkeley researchers have been working on prototypes
intended for developing countries. They must be easy to use, inexpensive,
effective, and constructed with locally available materials. The most
thoroughly tested prototype to emerge, dubbed the "UV Tube," will be
the focus of this summer's field research. The team will give families
their own units, but Reygadas believes that employees of Baja hardware
and supply stories may eventually assemble and sell the devices on their
own. Reygadas estimates that one tube will cost around $40, or about
the price of one goat. He insists the technology be kept "open source,"
free for everyone to use as long as they give the researchers feedback.
The team's work also builds on research done last summer. Students from
Engineers for a Sustainable World analyzed water quality in the same
Baja communities and found water in more than 50 percent was contaminated
with pathogenic fecal matter. Families were interested in participating
in the study by using a UV disinfection unit in their homes.
The tubes won't solve all water quality problems, such as salinity and
arsenic. But Reygadas hopes they will improve people's health. If people
like the technology, he says, "I'd like to see it established everywhere
where it is appropriate, not only on the peninsula but also in other
parts of the world."
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