Quality Assurance of Biosand Filters: Production and Distribution

The Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST) is a non-profit organization promoting appropriate technologies in water and sanitation for the developing world. An example is the biosand filter, currently manufactured by hundreds of organizations in 55 countries, and used by 650,000+ families. Ensuring filter quality will accelerate its dissemination worldwide. In this project, the quality assurance (QA) procedures are developed for (1) biosand filters (2) their construction processes, and (3) the distribution network, using Nepal as a case study. Besides verifying the quality requirements, the QA procedures will diagnose the causes and effects of poor quality, such as skills and knowledge of filter construction technicians, and determine ways for continual improvements. This project is expected to contribute towards developing a validation system that is locally owned, adaptive and sustainable, motivating continual improvements rather than pass/fail, and transferable to other countries, resulting in better health and livelihood worldwide.

Faculty Supervisor:

Simon Li

Student:

Nicole Chan

Partner:

Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Natural resources

University:

University of Calgary