Homa Bay residents quenching thirst the smart way

Residents of Kachuku Village in Homa Bay County can now enjoy clean and safe drinking water, thanks to a new automated purification machine. (PHOTO: COURTESY)

Residents of Kachuku Village in Homa Bay County are enjoying “healthy and tasty drinking water”, thanks to a purification technology introduced by one couple.

Known as Kpag-Aqua-etiam, the technology is a designed “point of use” purification system and can treat water from sources like boreholes and rivers. It purifies 120 litres of water per hour and is expected to produce clean and safe drinking water for at last 300 residents on a daily basis.

The couple, Ken Odak and his wife Saskia Ottenhoff, says the machine will produce surplus water that they will sell.

Users of the service will simply swipe a tag (key nob) at the distribution point to enable them access the essential commodity. They will be charged a small fee. “We will sell excess water to the neighbourhood and use the cash to pay electricity bill and other services,” said Odak.

Payment of water credits is done through phone to the sales point owner who then transfers the payment through M-Pesa to the filtration systems owner.

“The service provider transfers the water according to the set litre price and quantity per credit to the buyer. M-Pesa or a similar mobile banking system permits real time transfer,” said Odak.

By swiping the key knob at the contact point, the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) fitted to the filtration system metres out a pre-set amount of water until the credit is exhausted. After which, a new credit can be loaded again. The payment system operates in such a way that not only does it manage the water credits but also provides valuable data to the systems owner.

“The systems owner can tell the total number of credits sold and the total water drawn from the distribution point or the number of unique users,” he said. The system works through remote communication between the owner, with both the RFID unit in the shop and the RFID unit on the distribution point through a short text message.

The purifier makes it possible to provide easy access to clean and safe drinking water for the users, while for the systems owner, it offers easy and secure control over both the financial and the technical management of his systems.

There is the pre-filtration stage, followed by the purification stage that sees the removal of unwanted substances while retaining the essential minerals.

A built-in electronic control system is designed to keep track of the maintenance requirements of the unit. The couple plans to connect the entire county to healthy drinking water by installing nine other such machines.