Professor Eric M.V. Hoek and Dr. Gil Hurwitz will lead a team of UCLA doctoral students to 9 remote villages in Fiji to assess and design safe water and sanitation plans effecting 8000 people and dozens of schools. The team will engage village leaders in designing systems to meet new guidelines set forth by the Fijian Ministry of Works and Ministry of Health in 2012. The baseline assessments will produce the necessary technical information needed as the starting point for developing these plans and to assess the priorities for future projects.In addition, volunteers will be teaching villagers how to perform tests to detect bacteria in their drinking water using simple gel pack kits.

The project’s main goal is to improve the public and environmental health by providing clean safe water in rural Fiji. In addition to improve public and environmental health through proper wastewater treatment and disposal, and to provide knowledge about sanitation issues and training on proper sanitation construction, operation, and maintenance.

Help support the effort at the following crowd funding site: http://startsomegood.com/venture/rural_water_and_sanitation_assessment_program/campaigns/show/help_students_engineer_clean_water_for_fiji

Lee Portillo of WPE (left) with former Mexican President Vincente Fox (right)

Water Planet Engineering (WPE) is developing a new class of “polymeric-ceramic” membrane materials originally developed at UCLA under the trade name a PolyCera™. The commercial membrane product will offer the low cost and high packing density associated with conventional polymeric technologies, but will be able to compete in more challenging separations traditionally limited to ceramic membranes. WPE is closing on a $5M round of funding to accelerate the commercialization of its initial product offering.

PolyCera™ membranes are polymeric membranes that exhibit properties commonly associated with ceramic membranes. The membranes are super-hydrophilic and super-oleophobic, which improves fouling resistance; they also can tolerate extreme acid, base and high temperature conditions, which enables their use in challenging separations and makes cleaning easier. The water permeability and molecular weight cutoff can be tuned within the MF to NF range suggesting a number of differentiated products will be developed.

PolyCera™ membrane products and systems will initially be offered to the MBR, oilfield and produced water markets, and the first product is expected to be commercially available within 24 months.”