Glow tech

10^th February 2010

On the 2^nd formal meeting of the 3 groups on the date stated above, all of us had attended a lecture by Glowtech, a water treatment company that Mercy Relief had engaged in the same project that we had adopted in Vietnam. The guest, Glowtech’s representative Mr Francis Lee, was contacted by Mrs Cheryl Yap and Mercy Relief to conduct a meeting during RE periods.

During the meeting, Mr Francis Lee had kindly made a PowerPoint presentation and brought his laptop to show us pictures of models of water treatment systems his company manufactures. His lecture also covers several concepts in water treatment systems, involving the constituents that comprise of a water treatment system, such as the membrane, and also the types of filtration in water treatment systems, notably via Reverse Osmosis. However the gist of his presentation was on several solutions to water treatment systems.

Although there were several treatment examples that he had mentioned, the meeting had emphazised specifically on iCycle, a portable water treatment system that is placed on a bicycle. The system works when a person cycles the bicycle which pushes the water through the system. The system, being small-range, is relatively cheap. However, it poses several issues as well.

When asked regarding the sustainability of the system, Mr Francis replied that the system should be able to work efficiently as long as the membrane of the filtration system, does not degrade. The membrane of the system is able to last for around 2-3 years. When the membrane degrades, it would be necessary to replace the membrane with a new one which is available only in Glowtech company stores since it is customised in several aspects, such as size. The system would also provide sufficient water for one household, say a family of 5.

This reduces the sustainability of the water treatment system. Since we were to install this system for the villagers, it has to be a sustainable system where the villagers are able to make use of it for as long as possible. A system that needs to be maintained every 2-3 years may be feasible but at what cost? The membrane, as quoted from Mr Francis Lee, is not cheap and may cost from half to one thousand Singapore dollars. Furthermore, the villagers have to replace the membranes with those produced by glowtech companies. This may be difficult for the villagers since glowtech companies, like many other facilities, are inaccessible as they live in a rural village, even if there is one in Quang Nam in the first place. As such, the system is not very sustainable.

Moving on, we had tried to evade the problem of cost to brainstorming of ways to be economically-efficientin out purchase of the system. Our idea was to collect donated bicycles instead of those used in iCycle in order to reduce a significant part of the cost, and perhaps use the money to buy more treatment systems. However, Mr Francis Lee mentioned that this was a problem as the system works based on the rotation of the pedals in the bicycle. This makes the system directly dependant on the gear ratio of the bicycle. Hence in order for the system to work, we have to purchase the bicycle too which costs around 100-200 Singapore dollars.

So there goes the plan to fundraise through the collection of donated bicycles. We thought that if the system works on all bicycles, we could save costs that way. But apparently, we had failed to do so and as such it would be costly for us to purchase the iCycle. A more significant problem that the iCycle would pose is to whom should we give the iCycle in the village? We couldn’t possibly be buying iCycles for all households as we do not believe that we are able to raise that much money in a year. As such iCycle may not be a viable option after all.

While we had chosen not to purchase the iCycle for distribution in Quang Nam, we would like to mention sincere gratitude towards Mr Francis Lee for facilitating our very first step towards water treatment sytems in practicality, theory, and economical terms.