Zimba

Adding chlorine (tablets/drops) to drinking water in the right proportion eliminates the harmful disease causing pathogens. However adding the right quantity of chlorine to flowing water is a challenge when the flow rate is inconsistent or intermittent. Adding chlorine after collecting water from a community water source is also difficult for community members since water is often collected in various sizes of containers.

The Zimba device can be connected to any community water source like bore-well hand-pumps or piped water supply and can add the desired amount of chlorine to water, without community members having to decide the dose. The device works without requiring electricity has no moving parts and can be installed by any lay-person within 30 minutes without the requirement of any special tools. Being community scaled it is more cost effective than domestic water disinfecting systems.

The idea originated from D-Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and over a period of time developed at Kolkata, India. Commercial manufacture started in the year 2013 and have since been installed, and are operational, in several countries including India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Dominican Republic - in projects run by various NGOs and research organisations including UNICEF, WaterAid, EAWAG(Switzerland) and ICDDRB(Bangladesh). ZIMBA understandably has also been used successfully in disaster situations like the Nepal earthquake and Rohingya Refugee crisis in the recent past.

Publicly available: Yes
Countries where available: Manufactured in India. Can be shipped worldwide.
Price range: 100-200 USD
Offered or can be licensed for local manufacture: Yes

Dimensions: 76 cm x 45 cm x 23 cm
Weight: 12 kg

Documentation, article, or review
user-manual.pdf