In 2005, Professor Monroe Weber-Shirk founded AguaClara, a lab at Cornell University that designs passive water supply systems for resource-constrained communities. As a cap-stone project for his course, my team designed AguaRapida, a mobile water supply system for disaster response.

Unsafe water is combined with coagulants at the source before passing through pipes threaded with ropes with balls that create just the right amount of turbulence to flocculate harmful particles.

The water then enters sedimentation tanks filled with precisely angled plates designed to facilitate the precipitation of particles. Clean, potable water flows from the top of the sedimentation tanks into a storage tank.

AguaRapida can be built with cheap, ubiquitous materials and fits within a standard 21 ft truck.