Engineers Without Borders

5-7-08 General Meeting

May 7, 2008 at 9:21 pm | In Meeting Minutes | Comments Off

Engineers Without Borders Board Meeting

May 7th, 2008, 7:00pm

Kelly 1003

I. Elections- Congratulations

• President: Aparna Shrivastana
• Vice President: Evan Miles
• Secretary: Nick Moses
• Treasurer: Rob Hess

II. Poker night- May 16^th

The signup sheet has slots for setup, during and cleanup. Contact Katie for more information about this.

III. Babel Tower

Evan is looking for people to help come construct this ‘tower’ for the language department.

IV. Crystal Clear Technologies- Lisa Farman

Crystal Clear Technology Powerpoint_Lisa Farman

Lisa runs a company that has NSF funding. They have partnered to some extent in the past with EWB. For the most part the US is reliant on municipal water and when this service fails we want technology that we can passively go out purify water in the river.

They want to develop the nanotechnology and other materials to purify water at a cost developing countries can purchase. Her proposal was to provide something to purify 10 gallons a day for a year for operating cost of 1$. NSF then required her to double her claim. They have several NSF grants and Califeornia Clean Tech Open Winner, and Onami Gap funding winner.

Their technology is based on low cost high surface area substrates and bonding 3-5 ligands/nm^2 with functional groups that grab heavy metals. They can pull out Arsenic, Lead, Copper, Selenium, Uranium, Mercury. They can load multiple layers of the ligands over the trapped metal contaminants. She has samples with up to 19 layers of the ligands. The functional groups on the end of ligands could be changes to trap other contaminants.

They are working currently to develop a solution for the 60,000 Navajo Indians. Currently they pay $5mil a year for contaminated water. She has several partners lined up to help her at cost to develop the model once it receives funding. She mentioned several other water purification and sanitation methods including chloride conversion and surface modified zeolites with quartenary amines.

Her presentation will be posted later.

Minutes prepared by: Kelly Wilson, May 7th, 2008