MSU students bring clean water to Belize children’s home

After a year of hard design and engineering work, a team of Michigan State University (MSU) students have installed a water filtration system for Hopewell Children’s Home, bringing fresh, clean water to the children who live there.

The BAE student team

After a year of hard design and engineering work, a team of Michigan State University (MSU) students have installed a water filtration system for Hopewell Children’s Home, bringing fresh, clean water to the children who live there.

Hopewell shelters 16 abandoned, abused or neglected children on a 20-acre farm in the jungles of Belize in Central America. While the home currently relies on charities for support, the MSU water filtration project is a step toward making it fully self-sufficient.

Wei Liao, associate professor in the MSU Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering (BAE), served as faculty advisor to the team. Dana Kirk and Luke Reese, associate professors in BAE, were the instructors for the project.

“Hopewell Children’s Home reached out to us last year to help them become an ecofriendly, self-sustaining operation,” Liao said. “We turned the request into a capstone project for four of our students, so they could apply the engineering and science they’ve learned here at MSU in the real world.”

The team’s first task was determining which of Hopewell’s needs they could best address, given their resources and timeframe. Initially they hoped to use anaerobic digester technology to convert the human and animal waste generated at the home into an energy source. But they quickly discovered there wasn’t enough waste to produce all of the electricity the home needed. Forced back to the drawing board, the team discovered a different way they could help: providing clean water.

Hopewell Children’s Home relies on a well located in the center of its facility for much of their water. While the well water was used for washing and other purposes, its high iron levels and E. coli contamination made it unusable for drinking.

Meeting weekly with Liao over the course of 2016-17 school year, the team chose a hollow fiber membrane filtration system to make the well water safe for drinking.

The system pumps water through several small tubes fitted with porous membranes that block anything larger than 0.2 microns. This includes E. coli and a range of other bacteria, protozoa and contaminants.

Team member Carly Daiek, a senior in BAE, credits the team’s education in biosystems engineering for their ability to successfully design the system.

“As biosystems engineers, we had the background and skills to understand both the biological and engineering processes involved,” Daiek said. “Having clean water is one of the most important issues anywhere you go, so being able to bring that to these kids was very rewarding.”

Daiek was joined on the project by BAE classmates Ryan Ziegler, Madeline Labelle and Injoon Oh.

The team traveled to Belize in May to build the system they had spent so much time designing. In only two days, they installed a pump to send the well water into an above-ground storage tank. From there, the force of gravity sends the water through the filters and into a purified drinking water tank. A secondary pump then routes the clean water to the houses on Hopewell’s campus.

“Belize is only a two-hour flight from Houston, but the conditions are completely different,” Liao said. “Our students learned a lot and got to see the impact of their work firsthand.”

For Daiek, who will graduate next spring, the project helped her realize what she wanted to do after completing her studies.

“I was already interested in international work,” Daiek said. “I love to travel, but I want to travel with a purpose. Seeing the direct impact we were able to have in the lives of the kids at Hopewell solidified that.”

This sentiment was echoed by Dail Salzarulo, cofounder of Harvest Expeditions, the nonprofit that supports Hopewell Children’s Home.

“The water filtration system the team designed has transformed our water quality,” Salzarulo said. “The support of MSU and the student team’s efforts, vision, enthusiasm and drive to complete the task were impressive and a great example to our kids.”

The project received financial support from BAE, the MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, MSU AgBioResearch, the MSU College of Engineering, and the MSU Honors College, as well as a $1,200 grant from the Schoenl Family Undergraduate Grant for Dire Needs Overseas.

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