Hello, my name is Joshua Margo. I'm a third-year student at VCOM Auburn and I'm very excited to talk to you today about my project, improving clean water access internationally using 3D printed solar stills. According to the World Health Organization, about 2 billion people worldwide lack access to safely managed drinking water at home. In July of 2023, I had the opportunity to travel to the Dominican Republic through VCOM's international outreach program and alongside faculty and peers, provide medical care to a community in need. And while this was a great way to get early hands-on clinical experience, we noticed that a lot of these individuals were coming to us for treatment of waterborne illnesses. And we noticed that the limited access to clean water in these communities resulted in a host of preventable health issues among individuals in these communities. And so we got back and we got together and we discussed potential ways to reduce the burden of disease in these communities that are prone to waterborne illnesses. And this is what we came up with. We used 3D printed designs and solar still technology to create this device, our solar still, that is cheap to produce and fastens to just about any standard threaded water bottle or soda bottle. Think a Dasani bottle, think a two liter Coca-Cola bottle. And so it took a few iterations, but this is the current design. And the way it works is you fasten this filter to the top of a bottle filled with non-potable water. You attach tubing to this nozzle on the side and run the tubing down to this cap, which is attached to a second water bottle that serves as a clean catch reservoir. And the idea is you set it out in the sun, the water evaporates through a central column that you can't see from the outside and condenses around the sides and travels out that nozzle through the tube and into the clean catch bottle. Now, 3D printing has been a phenomenal technology for us just because it's allowed us to get really creative and innovative. And here I've attached a time lapse of our actual solar stills being produced over the course of several hours. And the way it works is very similar to a standard paper printer. It just goes line by line, adding material. And instead of using ink from a cartridge, it uses filament from a spool. So looking at our results, it takes about four hours to produce one of these filters and it only costs about half a cent. And now if we produce four filters at a time with one four-hole cap, it takes just under 17 hours at a cost of 1.1 cent per unit, which is pretty remarkable. We were very happy with these results. And you can see just below how the apparatus is set up in different environments. We took it to the Dominican Republic and one of our team members took it to Colombia. And so looking at the cost, the comparison of time materials and cost, we found that it is a remarkably affordable device to produce. It's extremely economically viable. The idea is that it's going to communities that have individuals who cannot afford to purchase clean water in the grocery store. The clinics that we have affiliations with through VCOM are not fully equipped, but we can send them a printer which costs about $170 on Amazon and send them some of these materials and have them print for extremely cheap. Now we tested it out first in a simulated environment. As you can see, we used this red heat lamp and to simulate tropical conditions. And then we took it to the DR and we took it to Colombia to test the durability and longevity of the material. And what we found is that this material is extremely resilient and capable of withstanding prolonged exposure to tropical conditions. It had absolutely zero problems with the weather conditions and staying outside for extended periods of time. The stage that we're at right now is the water production efficiency stage. We are working on getting more water to be produced in less time to make it a practical option for the target communities. Right now, if I'm being honest with you, we have a pretty lackluster production of water, but we're running through several more iterations to see if we can have successful results. And then also we have gotten in touch with mechanical engineering department at Auburn University and they've been helping us out with the design of that from the physics aspect, which I don't know about you, but physics wasn't exactly my strongest suit. Once we get water efficiency down, we'll test how well it does in terms of water quality. The whole idea is to try and produce water that is safe for drinking, safe for medical procedures, and so forth. And so once we get the production efficiency down, we'll be testing the water quality. If the water quality is up to snuff, then we'll take it into communities, likely the communities in the Dominican Republic and Honduras, in places that we have clinics that we're affiliated with, and have them test it out in the community and see if individuals are willing to use this technology in their daily lives. And after that, we'll look at implications in future directions, if we can reduce cost efficiency, increase production, and make it scalable and optimize materials, etc. And so we're very excited. This is a very promising technology and could really, really greatly reduce the burden of disease caused by waterborne illnesses and contribute to public health enhancement worldwide. Thank you for your time.

3D printed solar stills

clean water access

water purification

Auburn University

global outreach