Page 26 - Inventing Tomorrow

FRESHMAN GLOBAL TECHNICAL SEMINARS > were held in France, Ireland, and Italy in
January 2016.
“A better water system was needed for sure,” said Gelhaus. “Our challenge was to go in there and gure out how to get water to where it was needed.”
Gelhaus and the team soon con rmed the water supply was adequate. They did some quick calculations on the exist- ing pipes. The design seemed proper, however, the students suspected that hard water had
caused the pipes to scale. “The scale was decreasing the water pressure and increasing the friction so water couldn’t pass through the pipes,” Gelhaus said.
“It was all about collecting as much data as you possibly could,” he said. Team members interviewed hospi- tal staff about the facility, water use, and water demand. Team members often heard widely varying answers to questions.
Tanzanians provide the labor to complete the project months after the students have returned home.
In January 2015, Gelhaus traveled with 11 other CSE students to Dar es Salaam. Over a few days, they traveled by bus to Iringa and then to villages in the countryside. Gelhaus was one of four students sent to a hospital
in Illula, a city of 28,000 where livestock run wild and children played everywhere.
The hospital was a complex of small, clean buildings for care and housing—without adequate water. The local fundi bomba—Swahili for “plumber”—regularly had to open and close pipes to route the feeble supply to the various buildings.
Chemical engineering senior Benjamin Gelhaus participated in a short-
term Global Technical Seminar last winter break, "Design for Life: Water in Tanzania," that focused on engineering water supply solutions for a hospital in Dar es Salaam.
26 INVENTING TOMORROW
RICHARD G. ANDERSON