Long-term behaviour of a gravity-driven dead end membrane filtration unit for potable water supply in cases of disasters

Abstract

The frequentness of serious natural disasters will rise against the background of climate change in the next decades. One of the most severe impacts of natural disasters is the interruption of drinking water supply. Contaminated water causes the death of thousands of people worldwide every year. Mobile waterworks used by aid organizations are sophisticated systems with high demand of energy, skilled personnel and chemicals. They are designed to supply larger communities in the range of (several) thousand people but small and secluded areas can not be reached. The Department of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering (DESEE) at University of Kassel developed a small, transportable and easy to use dead-end membrane filtration unit for basic water supply in cases of natural disasters for small groups in the range of 200 up to 500 people in remote areas, the “WaterBackpack”. Experimental long-term series show that the unit is able to provide water in sufficient quantity and quality for the defined use case. Tests with contaminated surface water revealed, that a minimum flux of around 5 L m−2 h−1 can be kept up over a period of more than two month without any cleaning or maintenance.

Metallic Iron for Water Treatment: A Critical Review

“…disasters: floods, droughts, quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes) could leave thousands of people without drinking water supply for some days or weeks. There is a current trend for decentralized solutions for safe drinking water supply 56, 64, 95–98.…”

“…in developing countries). Solar disinfection cannot address chemical contamination and the efficiency for both ceramic and BSFs for virus removal was shown non‐satisfactory 97. In other words, there is presently no simple, efficient and affordable technology for water supply in low‐income remote communities.…”

Piped-Water Supplies in Rural Areas of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam: Water Quality and Household Perceptions

“…Zerovalent iron based filters are affordable, appropriate and effective and thus a decent water treatment technique for remote communities [39]. Furthermore, the use of small, transportable and easy to use gravity-driven dead end membrane filtration units could be an effective way of supplying drinking water to remote communities [40]. In general, the combination of the use of harvested rainwater and decentralized water treatment plants in remote areas in the MD could significantly increase the quality of drinking water for communities, and will most likely reduce the prevalence of various water-related diseases.…”

Testing Metallic Iron Filtration Systems for Decentralized Water Treatment at Pilot Scale

“…Conventional water treatment often calls for complex multistage processes (namely coagulation, disinfection, flocculation, sand filtration, screen-filtration, ozonization, sedimentation) and requires a wide array of chemicals (namely chlorine, flocculents, hydrogen peroxide, lime, ozone). The processes therefore also typically require specialist expertise for installation and maintenance [4,[10][11][12][13]. As a result conventional wastewater treatment facilities are often expensive to install and maintain and have a high carbon footprint.…”

“…However, three key disadvantages associated with membrane filtration systems are the high installation cost, high energy requirement, and the necessity for maintenance (removal of membrane fouling material). As a consequence, over the past few decades much research has been conducted into the development of more cost effective and simple water treatment systems for the developing world [3,4,7,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. These efforts include the development of renewable energy powered membrane (RE-membrane) technologies [19,20].…”