Off-Grid Water System in Colombia

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Off-Grid Water System in Colombia

Project Type

Technical Design - Electrical, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering

Date

August 2021 - May 2023

Role

Project Manager

Partnering with EPICS at Purdue University and The University of La Guijira, I was part of a team tasked with designing an off-grid water system for a remote reservation in La Guijira, Colombia. We had to identify a viable water source, find a way to power the system and design a filtration and purification system to allow for reliable access to clean water.

Project Overview

We partnered with a community that did not have a reliable water source. The community needed to build an off-grid water system to pump the water supply needed, and to have a filtration and purification component to have access to clean drinking water.

Specifications

These are the specifications we used to guide the design process to ensure we were meeting stakeholder needs.

Deliverables

Our deliverable was a project proposal that will be submitted to the local government to receive funding for the project. The government would decide which contractors will be used, but we needed to provide estimates for the labor and materials required for the project.

PV System Design

Although I contributed throughout the project as a manager, one of my major tasks was to redesign the power system. We had an electrical engineer do the original design, but having graduated he wasn't able to help us when our project partner changed their requirements. The new system needed to be able to function without batteries, and I was responsible for adjusting the design and resulting power requirements. I worked with a PhD student to understand how to perform the correct calculations, and how to ensure the design would work with the rest of the system.

The Deliverable: Water System Proposal

The final way I contributed was by compiling all of the work done on the power system, pipes, storage tanks, filtration and purification, and the bill of materials into a 30-page technical project proposal to deliver to our partner. I created an initial draft and assigned each section to be reviewed by the relevant party. Over the course of a month, the team worked together to product a well-documented project proposal.

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