400 Solar-Powered, Highly Rugged, Mobile Water Treatment Systems Deployed to Stop Cholera Outbreak, Iraq. 30,000 Gallons Per Day.
Following the Iraq War, over 600,000 people in one location lost access to safe drinking water and electric power. The people in the area were left with two choices: disease ridden river water or brackish well water. Applied Membranes was approached to design two systems: An mobile ultrafiltration system with UV for the contaminated river water, and a mobile reverse osmosis system for the well water. The systems were required to treat flow rates of up to 5 m3/hr (30,000 GPD). Both systems were to be totally Solar Powered and trailer mounted so they could be set up in remote villages without electricity.
A total of 400 systems complete with operator controls and mounted on trailers had to be delivered in 4 months! It seemed an impossible task but AMI rose to the challenge and met the deadline. All 400 systems made it to villages across Iraq and started producing clean drinking water almost immediately. The systems prevented the spread of Cholera and other waterborne diseases and saved thousands of lives.
Pulling directly from contaminated rivers, the mobile UF systems consisted of a prefilter stage, two stages of ultrafiltration, and ultraviolet disinfection. The well water systems used AMI high performance Reverse Osmosis membranes to treat the high salinity brackish water. All of the systems are mounted on reinforced trailers capable of being pulled by standard motor vehicles.
From its experience with this highly successful disaster relief project, AMI developed the integrated mobile water treatment systems that PureH2O® today deploys for our disaster relief operations and commercial mobile water treatment projects. No other company is the Caribbean region has these capabilities.