THE University of Technology’s civil engineering department has won a top award in a competition sponsored by the World Bank.
The competition attracted over 2,500 entries worldwide.
Unitech developed a water filtration system called pebble matrix filtration (PMF) which was selected as a winner of the World Bank DM2006 Global Competition on Innovations in Water, Sanitation and Energy Services for Poor People in Washington DC, on May 9 this year.
It was an innovation by senior lecturer in environmental science Dr Jayasiri Rajapakse from the common slow sand filter (SSF) system, where only sand is used in filtration to the new PMF, which involves use of pebbles as the bottom bed that protects the sand from silt during heavy rains and produces clean water without interruption.
Dr Rajapaski deve-loped it as an initial PhD research work at the University College, London, and then ran some trial projects in Lae with his students.
Following some publications on the project, pilot projects were undertaken in Serbia, Montenegro and Mexico.
Dr Rajapaski said a full scale PMF plant would be constructed at a water treatment works in Sri Lanka in collaboration with the Water Board of Sri Lanka.
Dr Rajapakse will provide technical advice on the project.
He said the 2006 competition was held in collaboration with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP) and the World Bank’s Water and Energy Practices.
The objective of DM2006 was to recognise and support local innovative initiatives that increase access to sustainable, affordable, and safe water supply, sanitation, and energy services for poor people in developing countries, and have credible potential for replication and scaling-up.
DM2006 was open to a wide variety of organisations, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other civil society organisations (CSOs), multilateral and bilateral development agencies (including the World Bank), private foundations, universities and schools, private sector groups, individuals, and local and municipal governments, he said.
Dr Rajapakse said that after a rigorous evaluation process by an international jury comprising of senior World Bank staff and leaders in the field of development and water, sanitation and energy experts in the private sector, the Unitech project on PMF was selected as a winner with 30 others, which places Unitech’s innovation as among the top 1% in the world.
There were 118 proposals from 55 countries, which qualified as finalists after passing through multiple rounds of assessment.
After the final interviews by two jury groups at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC, only 30 winners or 1% of the total 2,525 entries worldwide were announced.
Unitech’s civil engineering department also received two Mondialogo Engineering Awards from UNESCO/Daimler-Chrysler last year, one jointly with Wollongong University Australia and the other with University of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro.
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.
Some statistics for you:
- 16 children die every SECOND due to preventable diseases arising from consumption of untreated or dirty water (WHO).
- That is roughly equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing EVERY HOUR!
Some of the advantages of the Pebble Matrix Filtration and Slow Sand Filtration units that would make it ideal for PNG include:
- low installation and maintenance costs
- no instumentation needed
- no no chemicals used
- materials readily available on site (it uses different sizes of granular media such as pebbles and sand)
- no mechanical pumping neccessary (gravitational flow of water can be used to pump water)
- high efficiency of removing most common contaminents of water such as turbidity, faecal coliforms, and micro organisms
I think this project should be looked into more closely by the government and NGO's for funding as it really can be used at the community level.
CIVIL PAWA MI TOK!
Scoring disabled. You must be logged in to score posts.