One of the projects close to our hearts: a drinking water treatment plant for the village of Tonga, Kenya; close to Lake Victoria. Since January 2009, our plant has been providing clean drinking water for two schools with 1,000 students. The schools: Tonga Girls and Boys Secondary Schools.
Unfortunately, clean drinking water is not a matter of course. What are the implications? Diseases such as cholera and diarrhea. The following figures should have us all concerned: According to UNICEF, 4,500 children are dying each day due to the lack of access to clean drinking water.
That is why we decided to set an example and use our technology to help the children of Tonga. Using modular construction, we assembled the individual components consisting of solar thermic (Buderus), maintaining water freshness (OxyCat®) and photovoltaic (Solar World) on site and started operating our solar-thermic drinking water treatment plant.
The project was headed by the Global Nature fund. Lufthansa flew the parts, which were provided at no charge, to Kenya; and the Merz Foundation generously funded accompanying measures.
The drinking water treatment plant has a daily output of 1,000 liters. The pumped water is first being cleaned through solar thermal disinfection before being pumped into the storage tank where OxyCat® is providing long-term water freshness.
