��������

Reliable clean water is essential at  in Zimbabwe, where �������� engineering students are designing a water treatment system for drinking water and sterile surgical use.  

�������� students design clean water system for Zimbabwe hospital 

Matthew Shiel of New Hope, Pennsylvania, Lauren Kolodsick of Lake Orion, Michigan, and Caleb Weaver of Hudsonville, Michigan, are developing the system as part of their senior civil engineering design project.   

Karanda Mission Hospital needs reliable clean water for patients and surgeries 

Located in a rural region of Zimbabwe, Karanda Mission Hospital serves approximately 75,000 patients annually and performs nearly 4,000 surgeries, making reliable access to clean water essential for those who live on the hospital’s compound and for patient care. The hospital sources its water from a nearby river, where an existing system treats the water using a multi-barrier method. But during Zimbabwe’s rainy season, increased runoff kicks up sediment, filling the water with higher amounts of suspended sand and silt.   

“The problem we are trying to solve comes from having dry and wet seasons in Zimbabwe,” said Kolodsick. “During the rainy season, the downstream filters quickly clog due to excessive sediment and particles in the water. Our solution seeks to lower the turbidity of the water before it reaches the plant so that it isn’t overwhelming the hospital's existing system.” 

Engineering students improve water treatment during Zimbabwe’s rainy season 

Shiel, Kolodsick and Weaver joined an ongoing partnership with Karanda Mission Hospital that began several years ago. A previous team of Cedarville civil engineering students designed and built sand filters to enhance the hospital’s water treatment system. While still effective, the existing filters require intensive maintenance during the rainy season.  

“The sand filters are supposed to be cleaned and backwashed every three days,” said Shiel. “But when the turbidity is really bad, they must clean the filters three times a day. So the system functions, but not as well as it could.” 

Senior civil engineering team develops pretreatment and chemical treatment solutions 

Each civil engineering senior design team has six people, but Shiel, Kolodsick and Weaver’s team chose to narrow their focus. They worked on creating the water pretreatment system while their other three teammates, Shannon McKay from Floyds Knobs, Indiana, Ian Bellinger from Alger, Michigan, and Jeremiah Payne from Visalia, California, handled the chemical treatment of the water. 

Cedarville prototype uses gravity-powered clarifier to remove sediment 

After extensive research and design work during the fall semester, the team built a plexiglass prototype to test its ideas and refine the treatment system. Their design uses gravity to settle the sand particles out of the water, an energy-efficient solution well-suited to Zimbabwe’s unreliable power grid.  

“We built a ‘clarifier’ to remove the larger sand particles before it reaches the pumps,” said Kolodsick. “We used angled plates so that the water is shot up diagonally, shortening the distance the sand particles need to drop out and settling many of the particles from the water.” 

Students hope to travel to Zimbabwe to install the hospital water filtration system 

The team hopes to finalize its design so members can travel to Zimbabwe over the summer to help build and install the filtration system.  

About �������� 

��������, an evangelical Christian institution in southwest Ohio, offers undergraduate and graduate residential and online programs across arts, sciences and professional fields. With 7,265 students, it is among Ohio's largest private universities and is ranked among the nation’s top five evangelical universities in the Wall Street Journal’s 2026 Best Colleges in the U.S. Cedarville is also known for its vibrant Christian community, challenging academics and high graduation and retention rates. Learn more at cedarville.edu.