This project aims at improving the quality of the water produced by the 1001 fontaines sites. The focus will be put on two specific issues: adjusting the water treatment to each type of water source and improving the quality of water storage.
> Focusing on water quality
Increasing access to “improved water sources” such as stated by the Millennium Goals does not guarantee that the populations are actually benefitting from a high quality of water. In developing countries especially, water quality can be affected by a wide range of processes, being natural or the result of human activity leading to physical or chemical contamination (human waste, agriculture, industry).
Water can be unsafe for human consumption if its quality is hampered due to lack of proper treatment, recontamination during transport or storage. However, it can also be “considered” unsafe by non-harmful qualities such as taste or odor leading to poor perception by users (UNICEF, Report on Water Quality Assessment & Monitoring, 2010).
Improving access to high quality of drinking water and its desirability in developing countries is therefore a particular challenge.
> The processes and technology used by 1001 fontaines
1001 fontaines uses a simple and low cost technology to produce safe water: Surface water is pumped from rivers or ponds. Small quantities of aluminium sulphate are added to the water to accelerate the settling of the suspended matter (flocculation). The water then goes through an activated carbon filter, a sand filter and finally an array of smaller filters (from 60 to 1 micron) to eliminate the remaining impurities. The water is then sent though the ultraviolet sterilization chamber. As the water flows at a constant flow through the system, the ultraviolet rays disinfect the water by killing the remaining microorganisms. The whole treatment unit (water pump and UV system) is powered by solar energy.
The water is then bottled in 20-litre containers, which are disinfected with small quantities of chlorine, filled and sealed. These bottles are delivered directly to the clients’ home, ensuring water quality at the point of consumption.
> Water quality management and monitoring at 1001 fontaines
To quote Louis Pasteur, “We drink 90% of our diseases”. 1001 fontaines focuses on improving the health of rural populations so that guaranteeing access to high quality water is a continuous preoccupation for the 1001 fontaines teams in the field.
The first project aiming at monitoring and improving the quality of water produced by 1001 fontaines stations was launched in 2008, with the support of Merieux foundation and Cergy Pontoise University.
This project led to:
• The creation of a 1001 fontaines water analysis laboratory in Battambang.
Before the implementation of this laboratory, the NGO used to send samples of the water produced to the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh every 3 months. Having its own structure facilitates the number of tests which can be done, ensuring closer monitoring of the water quality.
This laboratory uses standard methods to detect the presence of indicators of fecal contamination: counts of E.Coli and CT, measure a few chemical elements and physical parameters.
• The set up of a process to control the quality of the water on site for the operator
A process was set up to enable each operator and assistant to control the quality of the water directly on site through a presence-absence test, increasing the frequency of water quality control.
The “Presence ? Absence” (P?A) test is a rapid detection test which can be used on site at room temperature without specific equipment.
• The set up of a quality management system for the “animators” (facilitators)
A specific process was set up to help the animators from the local NGO regularly control the quality of the water through a series of tests, ensuring a second and independent level of control.
The animators run these tests regularly at the NGO’s laboratory, inform the operators of the results and if necessary help him/her adjust the treatment process.
Ensuring the quality of the water is an on-going process and can always be improved which is why we wish to launch a new project aiming at improving the quality of the water produced. This project will focus on:
• Understanding the origin of taste and odor in different water sources
• Improving pre-treatment of surface and underground water to improve taste
• Upgrading the process and products to guarantee the quality of the storage of the water
We would be delighted to receive financial support from the BPN on this project as well as benefit from the PWX members expertise on water treatment to help us improve our model.
Optimizing water treatment and quality control at 1001 fontaines sites in Cambodia
Battambang, Cambodia
Please refer to the comment in the section "People getting other benefits"
Please refer to the comment in the section "People getting other benefits"
This project aims at improving the quality of the drinking water produced, and will focus on conducting studies in the NGO’s laboratory and on site to understand the areas of improvement of the model and implement the necessary adjustments at existing and new 1001 fontaines sites.
The project will therefore not have a direct impact on new beneficiaries but will help each operator increase the quality of the water produced. This will contribute to making the project more appealing to existing and new customers as well as ensuring a higher satisfaction for the 1001 fontaines bottled drinking water.
Indeed, we know that the taste of the water produced is one of the barriers to recruiting new clients. If we are able to adjust this parameter, we will be able to reach out to many more beneficiaries and change water use habits.
As of June 2013, the project enables 150 000 people in Cambodia to drink safe water every day and we are currently launching new sites to reach out to 150 000 additional beneficiaries. This project will primarily impact the new sites which will be launched but will also help improve the quality of the water produced at existing sites. Therefore, we consider that this project will increase the quality of the service provided to all 1001 fontaines customers.
The results of this project should also be of interest to all members of the PWX involved in the implementation of solutions for clean, high quality drinking water.
The objective of the project is to find cost effective solutions to harmonize the quality of the water produced at 1001 fontaines sites and increase its quality.
The project will combine academic research focusing on collecting relevant information, facts and existing studies on the identified topics for improvements. This research phase will provide the team with hard facts to develop strategies to address the problems in the field.
These different strategies will then be tested in the NGO’s laboratory to draw a first set of conclusions and identify the most relevant strategies. Finally a field validation will be conducted to ensure that the solutions developed are applicable on site.
Three studies will be conducted:
1. Study 1: guaranteeing the quality of the water stored, reducing the cost of microbiological analysis of the water on site
Specific areas of research:
• Improving the bottle disinfection by studying different products
• Increasing persistence of water quality by assessing different products in compliance with local regulations.
This study will be conducted over a 2 month period. The first month will be dedicated to academic research and initial testing in the laboratory and the second month on work in the field and knowledge transfer to the local team.
2. Study 2: Optimizing underground water treatment to reduce taste and odor
Specific areas of research:
• Identifying the origin of taste and odor (high level of minerals – calcium, iron)
• Adjusting the process and maintenance to reduce concentration of minerals (aeration)
3. Study 3: Optimizing surface water treatment to reduce taste and odor
Specific areas of research:
• Identifying the origin of taste and odor (high level of minerals – micro-algae, organic)
• Optimizing the flocculation step by adding mechanization of mixing
• Optimizing the activated carbon filter step by sizing it better and ensuring optimal maintenance
These studies will be conducted over a 10 month period with approximately 2 months of academic research and work in the laboratory, 4 to 7 months of work on site and 1 month of training and knowledge transfer.
These three studies will contribute to identifying solutions to address each of these issues as well as globally reducing the cost of quality control.
Please refer to the previous paragraph
> Involving the operators
Once the first tests have been run in the laboratory, we will work with several pilot sites in the field to run “real environment” testing and produce more accurate results. The local operators will therefore be actively involved during this experimental phase. We expect to run this experimental phase at 5 sites.
> Involving the beneficiaries
Although the quality of the water can easily be evaluated according to international norms, the threshold of acceptability of local populations on matters such as taste and odor can be more complicated to define.
The organization being field driven, we try to take into account as much feedback as possible from the beneficiary communities and involve them in improving the model.
Regarding qualitative information, the operators for example regularly provide feedback to the animators on the clients’ opinion of the service and possible complaints. These elements help the local team identify priority areas of improvement.
As interviews are generally the best way to find out what the beneficiaries want, we try, whenever possible, to collect information directly from the beneficiaries and local community leaders. This can be done through individual consultation or sometimes by interviewing a group of people to stimulate different views and opinion.
Finally, monitoring the sales of each site and client retention are also important indicators of the communities’ satisfaction.
1001 fontaines and Teuk Saat, the local implementer have been working closely with the Ministry of Rural Development since 2007, actively taking part in the monthly meeting with other NGOs on the subject of research on water quality.
We also work with the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Energy (MIME), which plays an important role in setting water quality standards and ensuring that bottled water projects are compliant with local and international regulations. The MIME regulations and recommendations will be taken into account in the choice of new products to improve the treatment process.
There is no information about ancillary activities currently available for this plan.
There is no information about other issues currently available for this plan.
Research projects are always designed over a specified period of time, and are therefore not designed to last. In this case, there are no maintenance costs related with the project.
There is no information about costs for maintenance currently available for this plan.
The project being focused on research, the metrics we will be following will be the outcomes of the studies, ie :
- having a better understanding of how to guarantee the quality of the water stored though a list of recommended products to disinfect the bottle and improve persistence of the water quality
- having a better understanding of how to reduce taste and odor in underground and surface water by defining a specific protocole to reduce concentration according to the levels of mineral in the water source (aeration process, floculation, carbon filter optimization)
The goal of this project is ultimatly to help the team improve the quality of the water produced so that all these recommendations will need to be applied in the field. We will ensure that this is the case by closely monitoring the implementation of each of these recommendations on site through the monthly visits conducted by the operator.
The water quality (taste and odor) will continue to be monitored on a regular basis as it already is the case.
Personnel costs: 31 202
Logistics: 5 212
Material: 4 100
Administrative costs: 900
For more information, please refer to attachments
Other private foundations and 1001 fontaines funds
Non financial (feedback)
1. If the bottles are clean, why the need to chlorinate the bottles/water? The water coming out of the ultra violet light purifier is dirt, bacteria and chemical free- because of this, why the need to chlorinate the water after it is in the bottles?
2. Are the filter operators from your organization or are they trained members of the community?
3.How much do the beneficiaries pay for a bottle of water? Do these costs cover maintenance costs?
4. This seems expensive for just research- are there other ways to conduct this without such high costs?
Thanks!
Jamin
It sounds like you have already identified the reasons for the odor and taste (high levels of minerals like calcium and iron) as well as how to reduce the concentration (aeration). If so, why is the cost so high for research? What do the 2 months of academic research and 4-7 months of onsite work entail?
I look forward to your answers,
Jenna
Thank you for your remarks and questions. I’ll try to answer in a comprehensive way.
1. We use chlorine only to disinfect bottles before rinsing it and filling it with purified water. Indeed our bottles are reused, meaning that when delivering bottles of clean water, the operator gets the empty ones, washes it and to re-fills it; it’a an ongoing cycle. In no case water is chlorinated, as the communities we serve in Cambodia don’t care for chlorine taste, which is a constraint we had to consider in the first place.
2. All operators are local villagers who are recruited and trained by our local partner team to run a safe drinking water production and distribution activity. In the present proposal, operators of a limited number of existing water stations will be actively involved in the project, since one of the objectives of this R&D; project is to improve water treatment processes in order to better suit local operators constraints, needs and competences in the long run. The outcomes of this project will then benefit all the operators exploiting a water station under the 1001 fontaines initiative.
3. The cost of a 20-litres bottle of purified water is between 1,000 and 1,200 riels in Cambodia, i.e. around USD 0.20, or USD 0.01 per litre. This cost is affordable for local people and enable the operators to cover for maintenance costs as well as get a stable revenue.
4. (also answers Jenna’s questions) One of the main components of our project on optimizing water treatment and quality control is about the odor and taste of water, which is one of the most complicated parameters to be regulated and monitored. A number of scientific studies have been conducted on these issues by different organizations, which gives us an idea of the reasons associated to odor and taste But we need to refine this analysis within the context of our stations and most importantly our aim is to establish a protocol to identify the different causes of different situations, understandable et usable for local technicians from an operational perspective.
The cost of the project includes different experiments conducted under real conditions, i.e. with at least 6 months of implementation in the field in order to test the results of various protocols. Field testing will be preceded by laboratory studies. For example, identifying a good chlorine product for bottle disinfection – with good disinfectant properties but acceptable odor and taste, at a reasonable cost – is one of the items on the list. After doing a review of existing documents on the corresponding products and also comparing suppliers available locally, selected products will be first tested in our laboratory, and then only the most convincing will be tested on site. This field experiment takes several months, as the objective is to observe the outcomes in terms of water quality but also as regards the conditions of use over time. Hence project costs mainly include human resource, as the whole project will be implemented by local technical staffs, in our laboratory and in the 5 stations selected as pilot sites.
For sure we could decide to use technologies such as reverse osmosis, which are typically used for larger infrastructures. In that case, we would not have to conduct a specific study ( so we would not engage the costs of the present proposal) but, in return, the investment cost of installing reverse osmosis in all our water stations would be way too high. On the contrary, we try to keep our project costs as low as possible while ensuring a very good quality in our water treatment and quality control processes. This is the reason why we decided to invest in a comprehensive research & development project, with a view to identify practices that fits to the local context of our projects in Cambodia, as well as in Madagascar. We hope the results of this work will also be useful to other organizations involved in safe water production.
Best regards
Helene
Thank you for your response. I do have two additional questions:
1. What is the total dissolved solids content of the water?
2. How many liters per day are you distributing?
Thanks!
Jamin
1. I don't have that information as it varies quite a lot from one source to another. I guess your question is about the type of water we treat. I can tell you we often face high turbidity when using surface water, which is why the pre-treatment phase plays a great role prior to the purification itself. Let me know if you have additional concerns on this topic.
2. The production capacity of the system is 600L/hour. A water station typically produces and distributes an average 1,200 liters per day after 12 months of activity (this corresponds to the break even point). The objective is to double this figure after 3 years by increasing the customer base.
best,
Helene