Ridhi Mirchandani
People in East Africa struggle with droughts. After droughts, people are so in need of water that they forget about making good water choices. This leads in many people contracting cholera through the contamintaed water. Cholera is a water-borne disease that can prove to be fatal. This disease is very common in East Africa after droughts. These people need something to help them have clean water sources after droughts, and have a reduced risk of contracting cholera.
We will have to create a product that can provide the East African people with a clean water source that can get rid of the cholera pathogen. However, this product will need to be easily accesible, and also not too expensive. It will need to be lightweight, and durable.
The organism that we are biologically inspired by for our product is the elephant. We brainstormed three ideas. One of them was a funnel that could be placed in the water and it would spin with a jet to remove the pathogen. However, that was not very realistic, so we came up with a second idea, which was a funnel. You could pour the dirty water, and it would clean out the pathogen and clean water would come out. However, we thought that was very time consuming, and not very efficient. So, as a third idea, we created a type of pump, which could pump out the clean water and get rid of the pathogen. We realized that creating this pump to remove microbes would be quite expensive. So, we decided to create a mixture of some things. Elephant trunks can take in water and spew it out. Along with that, elephant skin can secrete sweat and pathogens. We are planning to create a small device, in which you can insert a tube into the dirty water, and it will go through a filter and come out of the "elephant trunk" inspired spout, as clean drinkable water.
This is our prototype. The inserting tube will have a height of 6 inches and a radius of 0.75 inches. The tube will have a length of 2 feet, and a radius of 0.75 inches. The insertation tube will be made out of a sustainable plastic material (the prototype is made out of cardstock), and the spout will be made out of a plastic tubing. These materials are easy to access, and also can be made durably. There will be an on and off switch, and there will also be filters inside, that will be made out of elephant skin replica, mesh, and activated charcoal (the prototype is made out of mesh and fabrics)
We tested our prototype with many different tests. We tested the durability by dropping it from different heights. We tested the light weightedness by weighing it on a scale and making sure it was lighter than one pound. We tested if it was able to clean the water and if it was water proof (the prototype failed obviously, but the actual product should pass).
We are planning many improvements for our product "Quenching Thirst", and we are planning to have one that can filter out other pathogens as well, not just cholera. We are planning to make it more appealing, and easy to use.
