Saturday, December 15, 2007

Tech hydrologist has hand in purifying water in poor areas

Argen Duncan El Defensor Chieftain Reporter, aduncan@dchieftain.com

A partnership between New Mexico and Mexican universities is aiming to help people in poor areas purify water with a filtering system a New Mexico Tech hydrologist helped invent.

An undergraduate group Tech Management Department Chairman Peter Anselmo supervises is collaborating with peers across the border to commercialize the novel water purification system Professor of Hydrology Robert Bowman played a large role in developing. Researchers at Chihuahua university Centro Investigación en Materiales Avanzados, S.C., are testing the filtration system, which uses multiple layers of zeolite, a porous rock, including a layer soaked in mouthwash.

Tech, New Mexico State University and three Chihuahua universities are participating in the New Mexico-Chihuahua Partnership for Innovation, and this research falls under that organization.

Anselmo, who leads Tech's portion of the work, said the idea behind the project was to try to address border issues via technology developed through student teams and to have those students network internationally and get to know each other.

"Water filtration is quite a reasonable project to work on," he said.

Anselmo said the water purification device market is very crowded, but his group feels the zeolite system is different because it removes a lot of different pollutants.

"We can tune the filtration media based on what needs to be filtered out," he said.

Anslemo also said the necessary raw materials are cheap and readily available, and the required machinery seems relatively inexpensive.

He is considering developing individual filters for sink faucets or larger systems for single houses for small colonias, communities without infrastructure such as water systems.

Bowman said he believes the technology has the best potential third-world countries.

It's not always the most effective purification system, but it costs less than competitors, he said. That means the system is within reach of countries that can't afford other technologies.

Students are working on a market plan for the filtering system, Anselmo said, but it's a difficult job because many such products already exist and companies won't talk about the costs. The students have attended water conferences as an alternative.

To attract investors, Anselmo said, a market plan must show the effectiveness, place in the market and commercial potential of a product. Students must explain the link between business and technical aspects.

Anselmo said such technologies may work well on the small laboratory scale, but developers need to test them to see if they will handle larger amount of water.

Testing at the Mexican research university began this fall.

"They have some preliminary results that were very encouraging that they presented at the conference in November," Anselmo said.

Tech hosted a conference for the involved schools.

Bowman said the testing had removed all fecal coliforms, which are associated with human sewage, and reduced arsenic to levels below the Mexican standards.

"The zeolite-based system was not effective in lowering fluoride levels, which is a concern there because the waters are very high in fluoride," he said.

Anselmo said the team believes a simple modification will allow the filter to remove fluoride.

Mexican environmental engineer Maria Teresa Alarcón said her team runs water with varying quality through two filters and then characterizes it to see what the system removed. They want to know how efficient the filtering system is and how long it will last.

Alarcón said the testing period would end when the filters stopped working. She didn't know how long it would take, but expected several months.

"It depends on the capacity of the filters," Alarcón said.

The test results determine whether the filters go into everyday use. The goal is cost-effective water treatment so people can have access to clean water.

Back in Socorro, various students are researching Mexican intellectual property laws, working on a modification to make the zeolite system effective at removing fluoride or looking for an alternative binding agent to hold the materials together.

Tech students can also supplement the testing in Mexico because Sandia National Laboratory donated equipment its personnel were no longer using.

As for the binding agent, the colleague who worked with Bowman on the zeolite system has a separate patent for the substance and traded that patent for a high position with a private company.

To avoid having to give a large amount of the proceeds to that company, the students have found a promising carbon binding agent they are testing.

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