Like I’ve written in my previous post I would like to invite you in a small case study and share my knowledge of HAZOP. I present to you this photo, taken during one of the previous Humasol projects.
Do you remember the two rules of the previous blog post concerning safety? I hope you still did but I will recapitulate them again either way. When facing a certain situation one should take two minutes to sit back, and think of what they are going to do and how these can endanger yourself, others or materials. Then one should ask themselves: What risk am I willing to take? A way of quantifying a hazard is done by the HAZOP or hazard operations technique. We can use this method to get an idea for which hazards we certainly need safeguards (counteractions). Hazards are quantified in four groups (low-medium-high-unacceptable) by looking at two aspects of the hazard. First we evaluate the severity of the hazard (minor-serious-critical-catastrophic) and after that the frequency of occurrence (improbable-remote-occasional-probable-frequent).
Now let’s use this technique to evaluate the photo. Do you see certain hazards? What risk are you willing to take to perform that action? Which ID would you assign to that hazard? If found 6 hazards and I’m looking forward with what you come up with!
Humasol members are required to attend several workshops. I’ve already made a blog post concerning cultural difficulties based on a cultural awareness workshop but in this post I will talk about another workshop we’ve joined, a safety workshop organised by Glenn Gysels.
Safety is for Humasol one of the most important concepts in realizing a project. All project students need to be aware that in the South different rules apply regarding taking risks due to the lack of immediate medical assistance. If some project student gets harmed seriously, this could mean the end of the organisation. But even more, it could have drastic consequences for the students or the locals, that don’t have access to the same medical assistance as we do! Therefor, Humasol expects the students to make a thorough risk analysis so that we can anticipate certain hazards.
A clear concept Glenn has thought us was to ‘take two’. With this, he suggests we take 2 minutes to think about possible dangers of the actions that we are going to perform. What impact will these actions have, and even more important, is it worth the risk? For example, if you are going to weld a structure, what can go wrong and what precautions do you need to take? Firstly, we need to wear appropriate clothing inclusive protective gloves, weld mask, long sleeves, etc. But what else can go wrong? The sparks might cause fire, so are their any flammable products in the neighbourhood? The welding will cause metal to be extremely hot, could this harm someone/cause damage to another component. You see, by just taking some time, you can predict and avoid problems.
In my next post I will post a photo of a certain safety situation where I will ask you to help analyse the hazards of the situation in accordance with a safety model called HAZOP. Main parts where I hope you will join me in the discussion will be, what can you see that might cause harm, and what risks would you take to do this operation.
We have heard tales from previous project students that the locals don’t mind safety regulations although it should be very important for them. Do you have any ideas on how we can make sure that they try to follow several rules like wearing appropriate clothes while using certain tools?
When we are going to Cameroon we will need to try to find a reliable local partner together with a project location so that other Humasol students can build a ram pump next year. I’ve red in a report that locals are quit reluctant in reproducing a hydram because they see it as a black box that pumps up water with some magical intervention. People don’t understand the working principle and find it too complicated. They don’t want to try to build a pump for their own due to the initial cost that comes with the investment.
I quote the author: “Even a three weeks’ training course many water technicians do not have the confidence to survey, design and install a ram pump system. The design rules seem complex and they fear making any mistake that might cause a system to fail”.
Do you have any ideas in what we can do to promote our pump in the Binshua region and attract lot’s of attention so that people will be willing to take the step in producing their own pump?
I personally believe that it’s possible to share your knowledge so that locals are able to reproduce, modify and optimize a hydram installation. But it will take time, maybe more than three weeks but the principles of water hammer can be explained in a simple way. Maybe an experiment installation can travel through the country to create interest. One way of visualizing the hammer effect is opening a bottle of wine with a shoe or breaking the bottom of a glass bottle. I think that by using such small examples you can let them grasp the theory behind a ram pump.
An example video of opening a wine bottle with a shoe utilizing the hammer effect.
The project students of Humasol are constantly developing and designing ideas for various machines/installations that use renewable energy sources. After a year of research they get the opportunity to implement their project in a developing country. But because we are constantly busy with the begin stage of a product we can easily forget that a product has a certain life cycle where other factors also need to be taken in account.
After the on-site implementation, the students return to Belgium, but the locals are depending for a certain time frame on the manufactured machine/installation. Maintenance will become an important part to extend the product life, but how will this be financially realizable? Humasol works together with various sponsors who donate the necessary funds/materials for the implementation, but they don’t take in account that there comes a huge maintenance cost after a few years of running.
What do you think an organization like Humasol can do to cope with these other phases in a product life cycle? Do you think companies will be evenly thrilled for sponsoring for an older installation instead of funding for a new project? Plus, would you, as project student be evenly enthusiastic to join Humasol when you know you’ll have to repair a project that’s not your own?
A possible solution might be I that the project students who build an installation come back a few years later to check which problems the installation shows and solve them. But this requires quite a lot of flexibility from the students.
A couple weeks ago I joined other members of Humasol in an intercultural workshop in Brussels. There we discussed sociocultural problems in realising a project in a developing country with the help of CADES students (Master of Cultures & Development Studies) in a case study format. We were presented with a situation where projects students arrived at the project location where they were supposed to manufacture a solar boiler for a school in Peru. But the problem was that the local teachers, who have a big social impact on the population, rather wanted the students to built a biodigestor.
All participants of the workshop played a certain role, I was for example the project manager of Humasol. Then we discussed together with several key players how we could solve this problem. The CADES students tried to explain to us that sometimes minorities aren’t able to express their true emotions & desires. To give an example, the students of the school couldn’t explain their true thoughts in the group discussion because they were in the presence of their parents and teachers, whom they must follow according to the existing hierarchy.
I know that I am someone who dares to speak his mind even though it is to someone with a higher ‘power’ ranking then me. It’s just necessary that you can argue in a fact-based and respectful way. In Belgium, this is more accepted but in some traditional African countries this does not apply.
How would you solve this problem as a project student? Would you continue your project for which you have worked over a year, or try to satisfy the biggest local group and change your plans? How do you feel about the children minority group in development countries and the fact that they are not allowed to openly express their feelings?
Here’s an action photo of the group discussion. Yes, I’m the one with the red hat 🙂
During a feedback session with our coaches, the project manager of Humasol, Wout Cordeel, asked us an interesting question whether the installation of a ram pump can help to extend the efficiency of a water turbine and if this solution would be more cost-efficient or not?
To evaluate a certain set-up, we start with a situation where a Laval turbine is driven by water that drops 70 meters. Suppose that the inlet water flow is 50 l/s and that we want to increase power with 10%.
Can we reach these requirements? First we start by defining the power that the water can deliver to a Laval turbine with symmetric blades in function of the mass/volume flow: P = f(Q). We can see that we have a linear course so if we increase the volume flow with 10% we get approximately an increase of 10% on the power production of the generator.
Q_delivery = 0.1*50 l/s = 5 l/s = 432000 l/day (we want to pump around 5 l/s with our hydram pump)
Q_supply = 50 l/s + 5 l/s = 55 l/s = 3300 l/min (hydram inlet flow due to mass conservation)
Let’s say that:
H_supply = 14 m (the supply head of the hydram pump)
H_delivery = 14 m + 70 m = 84 m. Let’s take H_delivery = 100 m so that we include losses.
Let’s use a well-documented commercial ram pump for our installation: the Blake Hydram. In tables we can find:
Source: J.P.H.M. Tacke – Hydraulic Rams, a comparative investigation
V_pumped = 132 l/day for each l/min of supply water (the volume water pumped)
V_pumped = 132 (l/day)/(l/min) * 3300 l/min = 435600 l/day which is bigger then the desired situation.
Has this solution an increased cost efficiency?
So now we have found a ram pump that is able to lift the needed amount of water to our Laval supply reservoir we need to check if it’s not better to just built in a bigger Laval turbine. We suppose that the cost of the turbine set-up increase linearly with the power production.
Set-up cost of a Laval turbine: €12000
Set-up cost of a hydram: €1500
Set-up cost of the improved system without a hydram: 1.1*€12000 = €13200
Set-up cost of the improved system with a hydram: €12000 + €1500 = €13500
Conclusion: We can clearly see that our solution requires quite unpractical supply values and a big hydram pump. We can even see that if our linear cost increment approximation is correct that the system doesn’t gain a better cost-efficiency.
If you have any remarks on the calculation, feel free to join me in the search for cost-efficient optimalisation solutions.
Auke Idzenga, a Dutch-born marine engineer introduced an NGO called the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation, Incorporated (AIDFI). With this movement he tried to provide clean and affordable water in the Philippines and across Asia. In the article/interview that I have red there were posed a lot of socio-economical questions towards Idzenga, from which we can predict what effect the implementation of a hydram pump in a certain community. In this blog post I will make a small summary of the most interesting questions.
A first question handled how he introduced a ram pump to the local community. There he told the interviewer that AIDFI hired a marketing person that printed brochures, shot a video, wrote articles, and developed a website and allowed a prototype to show the working principle. Once several pumps were installed, the hydram began to promote itself. Another question handled the effects on the people’s lives. The hydram made sure that the locals had to spend less effort and time to access drinking water. But because the large volumes and the 24/7 working rate the hydram is ideal for irrigation purposes. Villagers were less dependent on rainfall increasing production and income. For example, the farmers started producing more vegetables the whole year round since the introduction of the pumps.
The NGO became less self-reliant after receiving several awards. They got attention from big companies like for example Coca-Cola who helped financing over 100 hydram sites. Since then they were able to sell ram pumps to other countries and even carrying out complete installation and manufacturing transfer to Afghanistan, Colombia, and Nepal.
The big difficulties that they encountered during the development were getting their hydram patented and dealing with the paper work for each project. Their model was only protected as a utility model, which did not stop other engineers from copying it. For each project a lot of paper pushing had to be done before the installation. Some villages made a bigger problem out of this than others.
For our small project, we can see that there are several things that we can learn from other projects. Things like promotion, patents and paper work did not yet cross my mind while these seem to be important factors. This summer, Lauren and I will visit several regions of Uganda where we will try to search a good partner/location for a hydraulic ram installation. So our promotion won’t be as wide like the AIDFI organisation but we will certainly have to try our best in convincing locals to let us help improve their hydraulic system.
I hope that this article gives a good insight at how the practical implementation of such a project comes together. If you have any remarks or questions concerning the article or our project, don’t hesitate to ask them.
It has been a while since my last post. With Christmas on the horizon, students are forced to set priorities and keen time management to combine all of our work so we are both prepared for the exams and upcoming thesis presentations.
I red an article last week on Resilience, this is a community of action-oriented groups concerning the biggest worlds emerging challenges. It’s a place where all fronts of discussions are open and everybody can share their thoughts. But it is also a place where you can find lots of interesting articles with scientific backgrounds. In the article, the author C. Seiler discussed the biggest emerging threat for Africa: the exploding population growth and all the problems it brings like food demand.
A report of the United Nations predicts that eight of the ten countries with the highest growth rates in the world for the period 2005 to 2055 are African. This implies that the total population of the African continent will double to an astonishing two billion in the next 40 years. With each increment of population, we need an even large increment in food supply if we don’t wish to have a more severe food problematic. This can be realised by either increasing the amount of food that is imported, or by increasing the domestic food production.
Studies have shown that modern farming will not be able to be sustainable to reach the African demands for imported food. ” The main reason for this is that modern agriculture depends heavily on water, fossil fuels and phosphate rock (for fertilizer)”. Those last two factors are finite and are becoming scarce and expensive. If we look to a recent example, the rice crisis of 2008 was partially caused by the rise in fuel prices. The same crisis caused a 700% price increase of phosphate rock. But most important, there is a threatening lack of water available for agricultural purposes. For example, the chairman of Nestlé is convinced that we will run faster out of water then fossil fuels due to the bad water management.
The limitations in resources, and the fact that all countries are expected to grow in population has as consequence that Africa’s challenge should be handled by increasing the domestic food production. The key factor for growing crops is soil quality, and 50% of Africa’s territory is insufficient for growing food apart from nomadic grazing. With the climate change grounds are getting dryer and it’s here where I want to make a link with my master thesis. Controlled irrigation with a hydram pump can help improve the humidity for a wide area of soil, and therefor make it more available for producing food. It is important that irrigation is done right, if not, soil erosion could have a reverse effect and destroy valuable quality soil.
But will improving irrigation systems alone be sufficient enough to face the growing problems? I’m sure it will not. Some countries like for example Somalia don’t have the option of increasing their domestic food production due to the harsh environmental constraints. The truth is that many areas in Africa already disfavour agriculture. The key aspect where farmers should aim at is improving their farming efficiencies.
What do you guys think of the topic? Do you also believe that the population growth is Africa’s biggest problem? Does anyone have ideas for possible solutions?
Let me know, and I’ll gladly respond!
Cheers,
Alexander
I saw an interesting discussion online with three Israeli experts, talking about management techniques and technologies. Israel already has a past in water scarcity and has therefor developed more efficient ways in using water then countries with a high availability of water. With lots of water is still being wasted and infected with chemicals, the amount of clean water is still descending. It’s unbelievable if you know that only one percentage of the whole water capacity is drinkable, that we still waste so much water.
The scientists state that if we look at using water efficiently, we often work with expressions of profit per unit water. This, while we actually need to express the contribution of that unit water towards society. Israel, 47 years ago, used only drinkable water for farming while now they use over 68% of treated reclaimed sewage water and only 24% drinkable water. The remaining 8% is used by what the experts call brackish water. This while the quality of the product doesn’t change together with a ten times bigger production rate then 47 years ago. Is this sufficient? This is off course a step in a good direction but the scientists state that there is still a gap between availability and demand.
They know that markets drive scientists, therefor they remain positive towards the future. Lots of researchers have already found techniques and methods to increase the efficiency of desalination of for example seawater. According to the experts, they have reached a quite affordable desalination process that would require around 3.75 kWh of energy together with a total cost of around 60 US dollar cents per cubic meter water. We still have to increase research on the matter to find better solutions because the technique that will be used in the end will be dependent on the cost, and particularly on the profit.
What struck me was the fact that there was already indeed a way of desalinating salt water for a quite reasonable price. But this would only be affordable probably in developed regions and therefor I didn’t feel like the whole scarcity problem was being handled. For each cubic metre water we waste today, we will have to pay 3.75 kWh on energy tomorrow to reuse the water, quite a striking figure if you look at the holistic of this problem. Energy resources are drying out, and therefor probably green energy will be needed to convert salt water.
I, as an engineering student, am also quite positive towards the future in the scarcity problem in developed countries. After hearing terms like the blue gold, I know for a fact that industries feel that there is a market at play where lots of money is to be made. With research teams with adequate funding and the global network I am optimistic that scientist will engineer more efficient ways for the desalinisation of water, in my opinion the best solution to the scarcity in developed countries. But what for still developing countries who often don’t have the pipe connections for large transport of sea water to the main land? In that case we still need to find more adequate solutions where there is not a solution available, nor is the industry thinking of funding researchers for that goal because the profit will never exceed the one they could make with desalinisation installations.
In this case I look quite negative towards the scarcity in still developing countries. I think the solution for them would mostly be dependent on their own research and humanitarian aids like engineers without borders or other organisations who search for robust, cheap and therefor most likely less efficient methods to help everyone to a clean water supply.
Here you find the video of the interview, it takes over 20 minutes to view it but its worth the time.
Questions? Remarks? Feel free to react!
Cheers and until the next post,
Alexander
Last night, I found an interesting paper concerning the integration of humanitarian development lessons in the engineering education worth sharing with you. It provides a model for this integration in a University in Colorado, USA but also expresses the necessity for a new engineering branch: ‘Engineering for Development’. This branch contains all other kinds of engineering (like mechanical or chemical engineering) but adds a social humanitarian aspect. These students should be facing the challenge of drastically reducing the number of people ‘whose job is to stay alive by the end of the day’. It got me thinking…
Engineers Without Borders: A global organization that uses skills of young people in the battle against poverty.
Humasol actually provides a big step in the direction of creating this new engineering branch. The model that the paper introduces resembles a lot like Humasol, they introduce a program called ‘Engineering for Developing Communities’ and tried to train engineering students ethical responsibility while they have the opportunity to gain hands on experience. We learn at the university how we can work our way in modern industries, while we leave out a huge part of the world. ‘The best engineering practices used in the developed world are not well suited to addressing the issues faced by developing communities’. During our lessons of thermodynamic machines we never spoke about the two hundred years old technology of ram pumps. Why? Because they are practically never being used in the industries but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be useful.
In the next two decades an additional 1.5 billion people are expected to inhabit earth. Of those people, 97% will be living in countries that are now labelled as developing i.e. a country with lower standard of living. [United Nations Population Division, 2006] How can we reduce this enormous amount?
By increasing their standard of living off course, making sure that they have access to water, food, health, security and energy. Our ram pump project can help for the first three listed basic needs: A ram pump transports water e.g. water for a small hospital or water for irrigation and is a low-cost robust solution for a local community. Therefor it’s a small step towards a brighter future.
We have to act now, maybe by introducing optional courses on sustainability at engineering colleges or by expanding and funding NGO’s like Humasol. We already have lots of technological solutions available for energy production/water transportation that could increase people’s standard of living. But that knowledge may not go lost, and therefor a really think that’s a good idea to change the engineering education, because in we are in shortage of engineers with a development mind-set.
What do you think, should we adapt the course structure of engineers, or leave it be?
And would you be interested in taking such courses?
Let me know what you think, and I’ll gladly respond!
Cheers,
Alexander
For the people who would like to read the whole paper, press here.
Humasol hydraulic ram pump thesis 