Volunteer Engineers Unveil New Pump for African Wells
Posted
Jordan Fouts-
When Abe Wright’s team of volunteer engineers built their first small hand-cranked water pump in a garage last year, they knew they had something big. Wright, a senior project engineer at DePuy Orthopaedics, and other members of DesignOutreach installed the pump in the Central African Republic last summer. On Saturday they unveiled a refined design, built to reach deeper water and last longer. “At that point, early on, it was just a couple guys building in a garage. We knew it was big after the first trip – so big, we thought we can’t just leave it now,” Wright said during the unveiling of the pump in Mudlove in downtown Warsaw. “We want to make sure they have clean water for 10 years or more, not just leave it at something that lasts a couple years and we feel good about ourselves.” The new system uses a progressive cavity pump, resembling an augur inside a fitted pipe, to physically move the water up a series of check valves at depths of up to 500 feet. The valves keep the water closer to the surface so it doesn’t need to be drawn up the full depth every time. It also has fewer moving parts, meaning it’s easier and cheaper to manufacture and has less chance of breaking down, Wright said. It’s an improvement over the old design, a positive displacement pump only capable of reaching half the depth. The three-foot-tall pump the team unveiled is only the visible part of a larger system, Wright noted, with plans to link the pump to a satellite and relay real-time data on its workings. The pump is also just the visible part of the labor that went into it – 30 volunteers from three states putting their time into design, analysis and fabrication. Chuck Christie was one of the designers on hand for the unveiling, along with Terri Bong, analyst Chadd Clary and program manager Daren Deffenbaugh. “The only time I’d seen this before was on my computer,” Christie remarked after the sheet was pulled away from the pump. “I’d been dying to turn the handle.” Clary praised the redesign for its robustness. He noted the technology isn’t necessarily new, but the key was putting it together in a low-cost way that will last a while in the field. Working with Integrated Community Development International and World Vision, DesignOutreach will conduct a pilot program with nine pumps over six months early next year, Wright said. Then they plan to scale up to wider installation, which they hope will impact thousands of lives. “We want to help (ICDI and World Vision) do what they do better, give them something they don’t have to fix as often,” he said. “The people they’re serving will have more trust, it will provide more value for a long time. It’s improving people’s lives and not just for a little while.”
