ANUCHA POH MAGA
PRODUCT DESIGN ENGINEER
STUDENT
MAKER
140 Thousand people die each year in Nepal due to contaminated water. The Phutung Research Institute (PRI) has developed an optical sensor that can detect such bacterial contaminants, but requires a robust surrounding system to sample the water and disinfect it. The objective of this project is to design a system that can do this using the manufacturing capacity and logistics within Nepal at low cost and high reparability.
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Domestic water tanks are prone to contamination, but by integrating a sanitation device, it results in a solution that will work throughout Nepal without changing user habits
Multiple electrical/mechanical systems required multiple prototypes, such as the pumping system and optical bacteria sensor.
The multiple system modules were tested in Kathmandu and were good enough to begin designing the integrated product
The modular subsystems (sensors, pumps, processing, power) are all individual modules that can be swapped in the field with little training or tools
The resulting product is largely made from metal stock and can be produced domestically with the tooling available. The rest can be 3d printed, with the potential to injection mold further along in the production cycle