Review of low-cost point-of-use water treatment systems for developing communities

Abstract

For communities in developing countries, the majority of drinking water-related issues are due to pathogens from poor sanitation, resulting in infection and diarrhea. One cause of this is that these communities often do not have access to centralized water treatment facilities. Point-of-use (POU) systems are key solutions for treating water in developing communities; they are typically user-friendly, low cost, low maintenance, and grid-independent. Importantly, they treat and reduce the number of pathogens in water supplies, and many POU systems have been deployed and used by these communities, improving their livelihood. This review focuses on POU systems that cater to households or communities, with the aim to examine and evaluate technologies that have been implemented in POU systems in the past decade.

Snowballing transmission of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) through wastewater: Any sustainable preventive measures to curtail the scourge in low-income countries?

“…Chaidez et al (2016) developed a lowcost gravity ultrafiltration point-of-use for the treatment of wastewater for the waterborne gastrointestinal pathogen in rural communities of Mexico. Some point-of-use technologies have also been previously developed, especially for developing communities to remove selected waterborne pathogens (Pooi and Ng, 2018) and enteric viruses in the water systems (Gerba et al, 2018). Since preliminary investigations have suggested the oxidants like chlorine, ozonation, and UV irradiation have the potential to inactivate the SARS-CoV-2 in a water environment (Rosa et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020c;Quevedo-león et al, 2020).…”

“…Also, some studies reported that SARS-CoV-2 loses its infectivity very quickly in wastewater (Venugopal et al, 2020;Annalaura et al, 2020). Nonetheless, other waterborne diseases contracted through the consumption of contaminated water such as diarrhea and gastroenteritis are rampant in low-income countries (Pooi and Ng, 2018).…”

Adsorption of lead ions on magnetically separable Fe3O4 watermelon composite

“…It is easy to operate, versatile and can be easily incorporated into current wastewater treatment technologies. Current researches are now geared towards the engineering of alternative hybrid adsorbents to the expensive activated carbon, and which have high pollutant binding capacities, low-cost with potentials for large scale treatment of wastewater (Pooi and Ng 2018), high stability and ease of operation (Abdus-Salam and Adekola 2018).…”

Comparison of Trihalomethane Formation Using Chlorine-Based Disinfectants Within a Model System; Applications Within Point-of-Use Drinking Water Treatment

“…Chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in drinking water treatment due to its availability, low cost, and broad spectrum antimicrobial efficacy (Rodriguez and Serodes, 2001;Farghaly et al, 2013;Kumari and Gupta, 2015). Decentralized point-of-use (POU) drinking water treatment systems typically utilize alternative disinfectant solutions (Mbilinyi et al, 2005;Peter-Varbanets et al, 2009;Domènech, 2011;Attisani, 2016;Carratalà et al, 2016;Pooi and Ng, 2018) or chlorine release tablets (Jain et al, 2010;Werner et al, 2016), rather than conventional chlorination solutions (i.e., NaOCl) for the production of biologically safe water. Alternatives to conventional chlorination are adopted due to quicker disinfection times, ease of transport and storage (Clasen and Edmondson, 2006;Jain et al, 2010).…”