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Professor Wilson Hernán Pérez and six of his students from the SED – Cisco academies, from the Jorge Gaitán Cortés public school in Bogotá learned that they had won the UNICEF TeachersCOP - an award that seeks to promote environmental education in schools - while in Colombia .
From their homes, the teacher and students Laura Valentina Pardo and Samuel Forero had just virtually presented a project to treat gray water to more than 1,500 teachers from around the world who were gathered for the Climate Change Summit (COP27) that has been made in Egypt this month.
They competed with 250 other projects, but when it was time to vote, they saw how the graph that counted made them champions.
"We won in the category of educational resources, even above the Germans," recalls Forero, now from college and days after graduating from high school.
On top of a table is the gray water treatment plant in which they worked for several months that almost reaches their height.
It's called IoT_Water and it's not very impressive at first glance: five 18 x 18 centimeter cubes of different colors that are stacked on top of each other.
But what is captivating is inside, in its processes.
It was created with 3D printers, it uses Telegram so that people can watch it from afar, the students themselves programmed it and it attacks one of the most urgent problems in the Engativá neighborhood, where the school is located: gastrointestinal problems due to low-quality water consumption .
At the Jorge Gaitán Cortés school belonging to the SED CISCO academy, a group of students under the guidance of teacher Wilson Perez, has created a gray water treatment plant.
In Bogotá, Colombia - November 16, 2022VANNESSA JIMENEZ
Pardo, 17, explains what each module does, as each cube is called, naturally using words that many have stopped hearing since they were in school.
Perhaps he suspects that it is not easy to understand, which is why his talk is pedagogical.
“Grey water enters through the uppermost bucket, where, due to sedimentation, the largest particles remain at the bottom according to their density,” he comments.
Then, by means of a motorcycle pump, he goes to the second module, the electrocoagulation module.
Similar to what happens with a battery, by means of an "anode and a cathode, one made of iron and the other made of aluminum, the water is heated by electrification until it reaches 60°C," adds Forero, also 17 years old. .
That allows metals, chemicals and oils to be left behind in a gelatinous mixture.
In the third cube comes the process of photocatalysis, in which ultraviolet light is used to eliminate a large percentage of pathogens from the water.
At that moment, Pardo takes his cell phone out of his pocket, opens Telegram and sends a message to the module, which responds with a menu of options.
She points to the light and the treatment plant sends a message stating that, at that precise moment, the light is optimal.
“We programmed this app like this so that when a person uses it at their home, they don't have to be next to the treatment plant to know it's working well.
He can be in her room or cleaning and keep an eye on it, ”she says.
In the penultimate cube, the water passes through a natural filter of stones, gravel, sand, ionic resin and activated carbon that gets rid of the last contaminating particles, allowing the water to be used for bathing or cleaning floors.
In the fifth module is when the water becomes 99% drinkable.
“We did it with condensation, a natural process in which water evaporates, condenses, and then falls,” Forero says.
A student demonstrates how cubes work.
VANNESSA JIMENEZ
In half an hour, the students constantly remember, the plant can make up to 4.8 liters of what used to be gray water drinkable.
It was a maximum that they achieved after several calculations.
And it is that nothing in this project is a coincidence.
The thickness of each cube, which they obtained with 3D printing, was measured with a hydraulic machine that the Minuto de Dios University allowed them to use until it could hold 1,500 kilos without breaking.
Module two, in which the water is heated up to 60°C, is the only one made of glass, a material capable of withstanding that temperature without collapsing.
Nor is it a coincidence why they chose to build a water treatment plant and not something else.
“There are UN estimates that calculate that, by 2030, drinking water could run out,” explains Professor Pérez.
But he also insists that they chose to do this project because in the town of Engativá, there are many gastrointestinal problems.
“We did a survey in the local hospitals and we noticed that the rate of illnesses was very high,” he adds.
Finally, a third reason is the cost of water, which is high in the neighborhood.
"With IoT_Water, a home can save up to 42% in water costs," says Pardo later.
The plant is designed for that, so that it eventually reaches homes.
The design is stable so accidents don't happen, and there's even a gyrometer at the top of the floor that starts beeping if it notices that the modules are tilting.
"Since we are an educational institution, we cannot sell it directly to families," says Forero.
"But we can offer it to firefighters or NGOs so that they can identify when there is no good water in a home and take it with them."
At school today there are only Forero and Pardo, the other four students who created IoT_Water went to exhibit the project at a fair.
“We did mitosis,” she jokes, alluding to the process by which cells divide.
She is already clear that if she manages to get a scholarship that she is signing up for to study at the university next year, she will choose systems engineering.
Forero, who is also waiting for a similar opportunity, is sure that his thing is physics.
His passion shows through as he explains each process on a board full of formulas.
He sometimes throws out a difficult question and leaves those who are seeking to follow what he says in thought.
Nobody has the answer.
Professor Wilson Perez.VANNESSA JIMENEZ
The two of them, as well as the other four students, have been linked to the SED-Cisco academy for barely two years, an alliance between the technology company Cisco and the Bogotá Secretary of Education, to which they go voluntarily twice a week on a regular basis. extracurricular, after their normal classes.
In the last days before presenting the project, the day was lengthened.
There were days when they even stayed until two in the morning at school.
However, listening to them talk about the experience makes it clear that it didn't bother them.
"That changed me," says Pardo.
“I thought that I was only going to be able to read or write.
That programming was for people like my dad or my brother.
But programming no longer seems like a myth to me”.
In addition to TeachersCOP, the IoT_Water project has won seven awards this year,