Sustainable Water Management – Agriculture Africa: Water Pyramid – Martijn Nitzsche

The water pyramid collects pure water in two ways:

Sea water is pumped into the pyramid. Clean water is obtained by the principle of evaporation followed by condensation against the inside wall of the water pyramid. This desalinated water is then collected in a storage tank.

The outside surface of the large pyramid is used to collect water from rainfall. This water is also collected, and stored in another tank.

A water pyramid with a diameter of 15 meter produces around 1000 liters of water every day on the inside of the pyramid. The production of water on the outside highly depends on local rainfall characteristics, but on average is about 600 m3 a year in Africa. Both water types are of drinking water quality. Ambitions are to use the water pyramid to initiate local enterprises. For instance watershops, funded by microcredit. The water pyramid has already successfully been introduced in practice and boosts the local community and trade.

The water pyramid technology was developed by engineer Martijn Nitzsche and is brought to the market by his company Aqua Aero Water Systems since 2002.