Neptune Water

We are committed to solving water contamination in transit from water service providers to the consumer due to heavy metal poisoning or disease vector contamination all of which come from either industrial waste or sewage waste contamination in urban cities. 

Our solution is a device that leverages technology with cloud computing services to monitor in real time the quality of water supplied to households. We provide a warning system to our customers in case of contamination and a water quality index of their previous consumption. 

If our solution is scaled globally, the many incidents of water contamination from heavy metals or resulting in waterborne diseases will greatly be reduced and communities will be informed on the cause of action in the case of an emergency contamination of their water sources.

Industrial and sewage waste in urban centers pose a threat to the water piping network that offers drinking water to the communities from chemical to biological contamination especially in the case of a burst pipe. Natural water sources are also affected hence secondary sources such as wells and boreholes are also faced with the possibility for contamination. The repercussions include heavy metal poisoning from industrial waste, waterborne disease contamination from sewage waste and this is a problem for urban cities.

Our main target population is the residents of urban cities who consume piped water from the local water service providers. This will extend to house holds who use water from wells, springs or boreholes close to urban areas. Most of these people might not have access to water purifiers at their homes hence rely on the initial quality state of the water supplied from their local water suppliers. The solution will provide them with a water quality profile for their previous consumption with a water quality index. Most importantly however is the ability to provide a warning system for them in case the water gets contaminated along the way. The local water service providers will also use the platform as feedback on the quality of the water their clients consume, burst pipes monitoring and mapping of all the water distribution profile in the city. Our secondary clients such as hotels will use the water quality system to provide quality water to their day to day consumers.

This will inspire healthier communities by reducing the incidences of water borne diseases arising from sewage and industrial contamination.

Our solution is a water quality monitoring device linked to the cloud (IoT device) that collects real time data on the water in transit to the client through water network pipes. The data is provided to the clients on request through USSD service and email on request while a direct warning messaging system is sent to the client in case of an emergency contamination in the water. The product can be installed on water piping networks, storage tanks, boreholes, wells and springs.

Being an IoT product, the device is a low power solution, made from locally available materials hence cheap. It also utilizes the Sigfox communication technology for long range communication and the Microsoft azure platform for reporting purposes. The data obtained is analyzed using machine learning models which are continuously trained on the data collected from different end points. 

The system is capable of inferring the exact contamination from metallic compounds while at the same time being able to detect the onset of contamination. For a network of pipes, large scale contamination can be traced to the point of contamination and the affected households.

Our solution is an IoT device that runs on low power (stand alone battery), very cheap and made from locally available components hence scalability to cover a large area of pipe networks is feasible. The solution utilizes the power of cloud computing machine learning and can be able to identify in realtime whether there is contamination in water. Additionally, the solution can infer to a very high degree of accuracy the specific contaminant in water which includes whether heavy metals are present or not and whether the water contains e-coli bacteria or not. However 100% certainty requires laboratory analysis of the water samples. The solution also can identify burst pipes which is a problem for local water service providers in urban areas. Our solution has the potential to be installed remotely in springs, wells and boreholes as well to monitor the quality of water even in national parks where the water sources might be located.

Our solution implements the concept of electrical conductivity as the primary means where an electrical current is passed through water and the resistance of the water measured to the highest degree of accuracy. From the resistance change obtained, a supervised machine learning algorithm allows us to predict whether the water is contaminated with industrial and sewage wastes or organic materials and infer the exact contaminant. Since most pollutants include the chlorides, nitrates and sulphates of metal compounds, when dissolved in water, their various molar concentration release certain amounts of ions in the water that directly affect the water conductivity. Similarly inorganic wastes reduce the water conductivity. We collect data of the water profile from the source and use it to identify any contamination in transit towards the clients consumer endpoint. 

Our device is an internet of things solution that is cheap, uses low power from batteries, it is made from locally available materials hence can be scaled easily and utilizes the Sigfox connectivity network to transmit data in real time to the cloud for further analysis. In case of contamination, the client is notified immediately and local water providers get to learn of the source of contamination through mapping of the contaminated water profile. The device helps to identify burst pipes as well for the local water utilities. Custom handheld products are also being developed as portable solutions for individual client use.

Currently water quality monitoring is mostly done manually. We intend to automate the process and assure quality to our clients. Just by identifying whether there is contamination in water or not, the consumers can be informed in real time with possible solutions on how to handle the water. Additionally, the water quality profile analysis can provide the local water utilities on the exact contaminants in the water ranging from sewage waste/industrial waste to heavy metals and also tell the users in case of a burst pipe. The low cost of production of the device allows us to provide the devices to large scale regions of the water network pipes.

Our solution targets households with access to piped water while our main client is the local water utilities. At the moment we are still at the beta testing and prototyping phase hence we have not quantified the customer profile market we will be serving.

Our mission is to inspire healthier urban and rural centers through monitoring piped water quality, boreholes, springs and wells allover the country. Our vision is to have a healthier city with access to the quality index of the water they drink. At the same time ensuring sources of contamination for water in transit are quickly identified and fixed before their is widespread contamination hence reduce the occurrence of waterborne diseases especially in slums.

At the moment licensing to run pilot tests in commercial water supply systems takes a lot of time due to multiple verification departments which need to verify our pilot program. In the next five years, the source of funding is the challenge we would face to  scale the product to large consumer scale levels.

Through partnering with the local water service providers and research institutions, we will be able to obtain licensing to run our pilot programs successfully. Also through seeking investors and grants and possible awards from competitions, we would be able to scale our product to cover the larger piped network system for the whole country.

The main innovators in the team are three. For time consuming or engaging work, we hire casual workers to help us.

We are a engineering graduate students from different backgrounds including Soil, Water and Environmental Engineering and Instrumentation and Control Engineering which gives us technological understanding of our solution. Also, some of us have different certification skills that contribute to the development of our solution such as programming for machine learning.

We are partnering with Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology as well as Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company as requested by the UN which help us through incubation processes for development of the idea.

Our key customers include the individual use who can buy the device, however, the main clients is the local water utilities who provide piped water services. Government planing and community health insitutions also will rely on the data we collect for planning and community engagement.

By providing real time information to the client, premium subscription services will be used. Also, the local water utilities will have to pay for the data they get access to from our platform.

Solve makes it possible for us to get exposure to investors and compete with other competitors while gaining more experience on entrepreneurship and the possibility for a winning award would make us have enough capital to scale our product.

International organizations focused on community health such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Microsoft or Google machine learning team and county water service providers and research institutions.

Given the AI prize, we will be able to develop localized machine learning models that feed into each other with our own cloud centers. We also wish to include the society through educational hubs in which the earners can contribute to their water quality through artificial intelligence programming solutions to get the best models for our project.

We wish to include the society through educational hubs in which the earners can contribute to their water quality through artificial intelligence programming solutions to get the best models for our project.