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\u201cBasically we\u2019re getting water from the atmosphere using our\nelectric devices; in other words, harvesting water vapour in the air. And there are many ways you can get water\nfrom the air. For instance, you can harvest dew, you can harvest fog and mist,\nand you can harvest the humidity itself \u2013 an option we\u2019re doing,\u201d Koigi said in\nan interview at her premises in Industrial Area, on the bustling outskirts of\nthe capital Nairobi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She reveals that humidity harvests, which the company has opted\nfor, are suited for regions with little or no dew and mist, mostly arid and\nsemi-arid areas with solar powering the kits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To\nbe clear, turning air into ready-to-drink water may sound a bit like magic but\nthe company\u2019s name \u00ad \u2013 Majik \u2013 also denotes something else. It comes from\ncombining Swahili word for water \u2018maji\u2019, with the first letter of the word for\nharvest \u2018kuvuna\u2019, because that\u2019s exactly what Majik Water does \u2013 they harvest\nwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\ncompany roots can be traced back to 2017 when Koigi participated in a global\nprogramme at Nasa Research Center in Carlifonia where social entrepreneurs\ngather annually to explore ways to tackle world\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While there, she met\nAnastasia Kaschenko, an American environmental scientist, and Clare Sewell, a\nBritish economist. That\u2019s how the three women brainstormed the idea and Majik\nhappened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe three of us were connected by the need to\nsee a world where everyone has access to adequate and clean drinking water and\nprevent spread of waterborne diseases,\u201d said Koigi, a project manager by\nprofession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prior, she had another water-related enterprise which folded\nin 2016 after five years of operation. Until closure, her venture which she\nstarted while still in college dealt in water filtration \u2013 making and distributing\nlow-cost tap water filters targeting urban households. Tap water in major towns\nacross Kenya is sourced from dams and piped to homes. It somehow gets\ncontaminated along the way, making it unsafe for drinking raw, an opportunity\nKoigi had previously spotted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides households, she sold the water filters among\nstudents to purify the dirty tap water in college dormitories as a cheaper\nalternative to purified bottled water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then Kenyan towns were hit by water scarcity in 2016 as a\nresult of drought, cutting off tap water supply and her filter sales plunged\nand disappeared, never to recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople were no longer investing in water filters as there\nwas no tap water to be filtered. That\u2019s how I started looking at the water\nissue as a scarcity issue rather than a pollution issue, basically a change of\nbusiness model,\u201d said Koigi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With dry taps and erratic supply, people turned to bottled water dispensers to slake their thirsts while refilling their jerricans at the neighbourhood water points for other uses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One door had closed, only for the other to open with her\nvisit to California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat incident prompted me to look at how we can democratise\nwater sources. People don\u2019t have to be limited to tap water or any single\nsource to have access to basic drinking water, especially so in arid and\nsemi-arid areas,\u201d she said. That would form the value proposition for her new\nenterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The startup has so far sold eight water harvesting machines,\nlargely in Kenya\u2019s dry, marginalised locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company can make devices that can harvest as much as\n100,000 litres of water from air per day, depending on client needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInitially we targeted individual households in arid areas,\nthen we found out they didn\u2019t have the capability to pay for it even if they\nbuy per litre through water ATMs,\u201d said Koigi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, she said, prompted a strategy shift to wholesale model to enable the company to cover its overhead and operational costs in the meantime. Seeking to democratise water access, the enterprise is now exploring options to return to serve both institutions and households, including pay-as-you-go model where homes would be paying small amounts daily on their phone for use of the water kits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRight now we\u2019re working with NGOs (non-governmental\norganisations) who are working in such arid regions and have water projects,\u201d\nsaid Koigi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re also working with corporates who are doing CSR\n(corporate social responsibility) or who want to reduce their water footprint.\nFor example companies that use a lot of water and want to reduce their\ndependence on on-the-grid water sources,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its flagship device processing 500 litres per day costs about\n$15,000 (Sh1.5 million) and can be powered by either electricity from the\nnational grid, solar power or generator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe envision the costs going down in coming years as the\ntechnology advances and more people get aware of it, enabling us to scale,\u201d she\nsays adding that her focus is on creating awareness campaigns of the kits as an\nalternative water source and pushing the costs down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Would she consider selling water directly besides the\nmachines? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not our market, we don\u2019t sell water. We just sell the\nmachines,\u201d she says, emphasizing the firm is focusing on where it has\ncomparative advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The startup is currently doing humidity harvests, suited for\ndry areas, using condensation method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For harvesting humidity, there are two ways of going about\nit, Koigi says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first is condensation while the other is by using\nspecial materials with high affinity for water molecules, so basically they\nabsorb water vapour in the air and when you heat the materials they release the\nwater,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her machines use condensation model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Considering air pollution in the atmosphere, what guarantees\ndo customers have that the extracted water is not contaminated? we seek to find\nout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Koigi is quick to point out that the method in use prevents\nsuch an eventuality from happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAir pollution doesn\u2019t\naffect the quality of water we collect. Granted, contamination may happen from\nrusting of the device or dust, but at the end of the whole process we have\nadded filtration system to make sure the water is safe for drinking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe collect distilled water and we also have a mineralisation chamber to make the water better for drinking,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read also:<\/strong> Vlogger Giving A Voice To Green Enterprises<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n How it\nworks.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The device comprises of four components which are identical.\nThe components have an air inlet, condensation chamber, a fan, air outlet,\ncompressor, refrigerant gas, collection tray and a pipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By use of fans, air is sucked into the condensation chamber\nthrough an inlet followed by expulsion of hot air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe use a similar compressor-refrigerant kind of system, very\nsimilar to a fridge. So we have the compressor and the refrigerant gas. So the\nrefrigerant gas is used for condensation,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter condensation water is collected on a tray then the hot\nair is blown out by the fan. The collected water is then transported through a\npipe to an external collection tank.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLike any new technology, convincing people takes time. Also\nfinancing hasn\u2019t been easy; we\u2019re self-funded up to this point,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe want to reduce the overall costs of these devices in such\na way that anyone can afford them. And also make people become aware that this\nis a water source that people can actually consider as an alternative to\nboreholes, for instance,\u201d she signs off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s\nan estimated six times more water<\/a> in\nthe atmosphere than in all rivers combined. By tapping this untouched resource,\nthe most affected parts of the world can have abundant, clean water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their\ngame-changing invention hasn\u2019t gone unrecognised. Majik Water won Africa\u2019s first EDF Pulse Awards<\/a> and\nemerged finalists for 2018\u2019s UN Environment\u2019s Young Champions of the Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beth Koigi is on a mission to have every Kenyan gain access to clean drinking water forever by simply turning air around them into water. If you think it sounds…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[533,974,1038,1246,1524],"class_list":["post-8518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-responsibility","tag-edf-pulse-awards","tag-majik-water","tag-nasa-research-center","tag-solar","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}