MindQuest - MindQuest & Partners are Worldbank Development Marketplace Finalists

Optimized Still for Rural area. Picture by Irmtraut MeisterStore this angel in big sizeThe German Environmental and Science Communications consulting aggregation MindQuest accomplished the final annular of the World Bank’s Development Marketplace 2006 admission programme. Just aloft 100 projects were called from ca. 2500 applications.

“This is in itself a abundant achievement”, says Author and Geographer Stefan Thiesen, architect of MindQuest. “The activity is proposed via WECF – Women in Europe for a Common Future, in cooperation with the German Energy and Water consultancy WIP-Munich.”

The proposed activity addresses the botheration of accretion freshwater salination in the Aral Sea arena in Uzbekistan. “The bounded humans are poor and cannot acquiesce to acquirement bottled baptize – if it is accessible at all. At the aforementioned time the baptize basement is in a actual bad condition. Management and aliment accept been poor afterwards the collapse of the Soviet Union. The bounded citizenry added suffers from astringent medical problems, abundantly consistent from attenuated bubbler baptize and poor nutrition.”

Dr. Thiesen proposed the addition of a adapted solar desalination approach, utilizing classical solar stills that are optimized for continental climates.

“The archetypal solar still is a accurate and activated technology, but beneath the altitude in Uzbekistan it alone is advantageous during the hot Summer months and, to a bottom extent, during balmy and brilliant canicule in Spring and Autumn. During about bisected of the year temperatures are too low to accomplish the stills – this January the temperatures alone to below bare 20° C in some locations of the region” says Thiesen.

The new still will acquaint cellophane insulation and accomplish with an optimized alone abstract chamber. According to “It will accept no affective parts, and no electronics are required. In accession the ambition is to alternation locals not alone in operation and administration of the system, but accomplish the architecture affairs accessible domain, so that added humans in regions with agnate altitude can carbon the system.”

The angle will be presented by Michael Papapetrou (Science Consultant, WIP), Gero Fedtke (WECF coordinator) and Gulbahar Izentaeva (director of the Uzbek NGO Mehriban) during the “Development Marketplace Conference in Washington, from May 6, 2006.

The activity would be co-financed and organized by the Dutch Government and the German NGO “Water for the Children of the Aral Sea” and crop abode aural the analysis framework of the TMF activity “Tapping Resources – Gebruik de Kracht van Vrouwen voor een Duurzame Ontwikkeling” (Use Women’s Strength for a Sustainable Development).


MindQuest offers a one stop activity based ecology science, action and communications consulting service, with specializations in: Energy, Water, Integrated Coastal & Protected Area Management, Climate Change Impact Assessment and Mitigation, Rapid Impact Overviews (RIOs) for abounding situations.

Contact: www.MindQuest.info , Stefan Thiesen, Ph.D., Werner Str. 203, D-59379 Selm