☆ Summer 2019 field study to test out the power of Better Bearings.

While many efforts have been and continue to be made to provide clean water across the globe, many sources of surface water are contaminated with animal and human waste as well as pesticides and chemicals.

Approximately 184 million people living in Africa depend on hand pumps for their daily water supply (MacArthur, 2015) with an estimated 50,000 new hand pumps shipped to Africa each year (Sansom and Koestler, 2009).

Despite efforts to improve rural water service delivery, hand pumps serving rural communities often fall into disrepair. According to data compiled by Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) ((RWSN), 2009) from 20 African nations covering 345,071 wells in 2009, 36% of hand pumps are non-operational. This results in a loss of capital investment in infrastructure and a negative impact on rural communities.

When a community hand pump breaks down, families are forced to find alternative water sources. Alternative sources may include carrying water a greater distance from a hand pump in a neighboring community, or less protected sources such as hand dug scoops or surface water.

Handle bearings in the commonly deployed India Mark II hand pump have been found to frequently fail, often in less than one year. Hand pumps in remote locations have often been abandoned for months or possibly more than a year due to the difficulty in obtaining repair services.

The Better Bearings product was developed by Tony Beers in consultation with World Vision during his tenure at The Collaboratory at Messiah College. Tony’s work on the product indicated that Better Bearings could extend the mean time between failures (MTBF) of bearings on India Mark II hand pumps from 9 months to 3 years or more.

A side-by-side live study of factory shipped bearings vs. Better Bearings will begin in the summer of 2019 in an effort to quantify the improvement offered by Better Bearings. This study will take place in Burkina Faso and in Zambia, Africa.

Would you like to learn more? Or to place an order? Use the contact form to contact one of our Better Bearings team members.

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☆ Burning unexploded mines and saving lives.

Anti-personnel mines, anti-vehicle mines, IEDs, and unexploded ordnance (UXO) continue to account for numerous deaths and disabling injuries around the world. A majority of the victims are civilians, including children.

Ordnance disposal specialists have used a variety of techniques for destroying and disposing of such devices. One innovative method has been developed by Dr. Don Pratt of Messiah College in partnership with the HALO trust which uses deflagration to burn up the explosive material in the mine without detonating it. The “Hybrid Thermal Lance” uses the reaction between pure oxygen and an acrylic tube to create an intensely hot, but well focused flame, to burn through the casing of mines and consume the explosive material therein. Another benefit of this approach is the ability to safely transport all of the HTL’s components via standard commercial methods, including air travel.

Don Pratt leads a group of students at Messiah College’s Collaboratory to demonstrate, refine and test the HTL. Several prototypes have been demonstrated in Afghanistan and Georgia. Engineering development continues on refinements requested by HALO such as an electronic valve, a countdown timer, and simpler operation.

Don Pratt approached AW to investigate the feasibility of making HTL commercially available to NGOs and other organizations involved in the eradication of land mines, IED, and other UXO.

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☆ Extending the life of India Mark II pumps by 300% for rural Africa.

Approximately 184 million people living in Africa depend on hand pumps for their daily water supply (MacArthur, 2015) with an estimated 50,000 new hand pumps shipped to Africa each year (Sansom and Koestler, 2009).

Despite efforts to improve rural water service delivery, hand pumps serving rural communities often fall into disrepair. According to data compiled by Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) (RWSN, 2009) from 20 African nations covering 345,071 wells in 2009, 36% of hand pumps are non-operational. This results in a loss of capital investment in infrastructure and a negative impact on rural communities. When a community hand pump breaks down, families are forced to find alternative water sources. Alternative sources may include carrying water a greater distance from a hand pump in a neighboring community, or less protected sources such as hand dug scoops or surface water.

The BetterBearings product was developed by Tony Beers in consultation with World Vision during his tenure at The Collaboratory at Messiah College. Tony’s work on the product indicated that BetterBearings could extend the mean time between failures (MTBF) of bearings on India Mark II hand pumps from 9 months to 3 years or more.

With millions of India Mark II pump currently installed worldwide, a substantial market for longer-life replacement bearings may exist.

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☆ Increasing hand pump reliability
through cloud based web applications.

Millions of people living in rural Africa obtain their daily water supply from hand pumps, yet many hand pumps fail and remain non-functional. RWSN reports that in Africa as many as 36% of hand pumps are non-functional (Hand Pump Data, 2009).

Most current monitoring and evaluation practices rely on someone visiting and visually inspecting hand pumps. This can be logistically challenging and therefore especially costly for remote pumps. Since costs must be shouldered by the community and/or sponsoring NGO or GO, inspections are often initiated only when a community self-reports a pump failure. Sometimes communities do not report if there is concern in the community that they may have caused the failure. Inspection visits, whether initiated by the community or periodically scheduled, are expensive and give infrequent data. As a result, lengthy downtimes for hand pumps are too frequent.

Hand pump downtime affects entire communities, but women and girls are often tasked with procuring water from alternate sources, which often requires them to walk longer distances and experience longer queues, resulting in reduced daily productivity or school attendance. The alternative water sources can be unimproved and unprotected water sources which can lead to heightened safety and health risks. While the cost of keeping hand pumps working often exceeds available resources, the long term costs to the health and well-being of people and to local economics of hand pump failure can be even greater.

The Intelligent Water Project (IWP) automatically measures and reports the health of hand pumps and the volume of water extracted.  IWP is configurable to also report groundwater levels. Sensor data is processed and uploaded daily to a secure data base in the cloud by IPW hardware and software.  Cloud-based web applications enable further analysis and data distribution to stakeholders via customizable reports and alerts, including text message alerts of degrading pump conditions or failure.  A key goal is to support field management processes that dramatically increase the reliability of hand pumps and decrease the cost of ownership . A secondary goal is the collection of hand pump data from all IWP enabled pump sources to provide a rich resource of data that enables WASH practitioners, managers, hydrologist and donors to make informed decisions.

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