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Students design water pump for African village

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Engineering students Meaghan Geist, Asha Ananthu, Ryan Reinke, Chris Hopkins and Emily Yeager.

The village of Guelekoro, in Mali, West Africa, will receive a much-needed water pump through the efforts of a group of Miami senior engineering majors. For their senior design project, the team designed and fabricated the water pump during this past school year. They will travel to Guelekoro just after graduation on May 10 to install the system and train villagers on how to maintain it.

Advised by Osama Ettouney (chair, mechanical and manufacturing engineering), Asha Ananthu, Meaghan Geist and Emily Yeager, all engineering management majors, with Chris Hopkins and Ryan Reinke, mechanical engineering majors, were charged with designing a simple, durable pump with parts easy to find or fabricate locally.

"This is the best project anyone could have been asked to work on," explains Ananthu, the project leader. "We get to use our education to help other people and that is truly amazing."

The team incorporated a merry-go-round as an alternate means of powering the pump that can be enjoyed by children in the village. The pump will be used to fill a holding tank with water, allowing the villagers to be self-sufficient during the summer months when area wells dry up.

"We don't know what it will be like when we get there, but we know that we want to make a difference in the Malian people's lives and we are giving it everything we have to do so," says Ananthu.

The department of mechanical and manufacturing engineering supports a variety of international projects each year.

Date Published: 05/08/2008
Volume: 27 Number: 21