QUATA: Week 5

This week is the final spurt towards our A³ JAM at CERN and we completed all our tasks:

• Contact potential interview partners and arrange appointments
• Process the received information and transfer the challenges into 21 Opportunity Cards
• Choose 9 CERN Technologies from Knowledge Transfer and prepare  Technology Cards for each technology to get familiar with it

Interviews

Like already mentioned in our last post, we had an interview with an employee from Mannheim’s sewage treatment plant. The whole afternoon was a positive experience for us. Our interview partner took much time for us to explain the general procedure in the sewage plant and answer our questions. Afterwards we participated in a guided tour, which was an interesting and helpful experience, not only according to this project.
We had two important key insights this day:

1. Microplastics – It is already possible to filter out the majority of microplastics, but the procedures are on a voluntary basis. Mannheim applies filtration with sand, gravel and expanded shale.
2. Trace quantities – This is a hot topic right now when talking about water quality. The amount of chemical micropollutants (e.g. cosmetics, drug residue) in our water is increasing. In fact, since 2010, Mannheim has an effective procedure (activated carbon powder) to remove up to 80% of trace substances.

Another interview was with a member of Engineers Without Borders about their projects. Beside the challenges, we keep two main aspects in mind:

1. Development Cooperation is more important than Development Aid, because cooperation ensures the sustainability of the knowledge and aid. 
2. High tech solutions/products are difficult to service and therefore not capable for developing countries.

Surprisingly we got way more interview confirmations than we expected and need right now, hence we decided to save them for later.

Opportunity Cards

At the beginning 21 Opportunity Cards seemed to be a lot, but our opinion changed after all the interviews.
You can download our Opportunity Cards here:

• Political Engagement
• Capacity of Sewage System
• Cosmetics
• Iron in Water
• Externally Water the Fields
• Farmer Pesticides
• Fashion
• Meat
• Medicaments contaminating Water
• Micro Irrigation
• Plastic Waste
• Rainwater
• Saltwater Intrusion
• Free Pipes in Sewage Infrastructure
• Sewage System is a well-maintained patchwork quilt
• Financial Resources to evaluate new Procedures in Sewage Plants
• Heavy Rain in Sewage Plants
• Increasing Amount of Wastewater
• Wastewater Reuse
• Water Privatization
• Trace Substances Measurement Challenges

Technology Cards

A very helpful platform for getting a better understanding of the technologies was CERN’s Invenio software with the document center. We have found many presentations and papers which explained our technologies very well. You can have a look at our Technology Cards as well:

• CERN Control and Monitoring Framework – C2MON
• Integrated CO2 Cooling System
• Compact Universal Orbital Cutter
• Flame Detector
• Magnet Power Supplies
• Medipix3
• Non-evaporable getter (NEG) thin film coatings
• ROOT
• Train Inspection Monorail (TIM)

CBI A³ JAM @ IdeaSquare

With our 30 cards and a basic understanding of regional challenges regarding water we are excited about the next two weeks at CERN’s IdeaSquare. We can hardly wait to meet the other teams and explore CERN.