Water System a Go

In 2005, through a generous donation from the Sieben Foundation, matched by USAID, the UAC built and runs a coffee processing plant, transforming coffee berries into green coffee beans, ready for toasting for the local market or for export.


Photo: Coffee processing plant in Carmen Pampa.

This transformation results in a large quantity of wastewater, and the plant has a wastewater treatment system that removes solids with filters and flocculation, and then oxygenates the water to remove the last of the pollutants. Then the water is discharged back into the environment.


Photo: Water treatment system.

Student Javier Álvarez supervised the wastewater treatment process last year as his research project, and found that the system did not effectively remove soluable solids from the wastewater. Javier had suggestions about how to improve the process, especially some modification of the oxigenation tanks to take better advantage of bacteria from the environment to degrade these solids; and cleaning the beans mechanically instead of depending on a fermentation process to remove the mucilagenous layer of the beans.

Javier got a 90 on his defense, the highest score this year so far. Nice job, Javier!


Photo: Javier testing the coffee plant wastewater.