Portable water purification | EPFL Graph Search

Portable water purification devices are self-contained, easily transported units used to purify water from untreated sources (such as rivers, lakes, and wells) for drinking purposes. Their main function is to eliminate pathogens, and often also of suspended solids and some unpalatable or toxic compounds. These units provide an autonomous supply of drinking water to people without access to clean water supply services, including inhabitants of developing countries and disaster areas, military personnel, campers, hikers, and workers in wilderness, and survivalists. They are also called point-of-use (POU) water treatment systems and field water disinfection techniques. Techniques include heat (including boiling), filtration, activated charcoal adsorption, chemical disinfection (e.g. chlorination, iodine, ozonation, etc.), ultraviolet purification (including sodis), distillation (including solar distillation), and flocculation. Often these are used in combination. Untreated water may contain potentially pathogenic agents, including protozoa, bacteria, viruses, and some larvae of higher-order parasites such as liver flukes and roundworms. Chemical pollutants such as pesticides, heavy metals and synthetic organics may be present. Other components may affect taste, odour and general aesthetic qualities, including turbidity from soil or clay, colour from humic acid or microscopic algae, odours from certain type of bacteria, particularly Actinomycetes which produce geosmin, and saltiness from brackish or sea water. Common metallic contaminants such as copper and lead can be treated by increasing the pH using soda ash or lime, which precipitates such metals. Careful decanting of the clear water after settlement or the use of filtration provides acceptably low levels of metals. Water contaminated by aluminium or zinc cannot be treated in this way using a strong alkali as higher pHs re-dissolve the metal salts. Salt is difficult to remove except by reverse osmosis or distillation.

The Energy and Water Emergency Module; A containerized solution for meeting the energy and water needs in protracted displacement situations

Govinda Upadhyay, Anish Modi

The world has faced many natural and man-made disasters in the past few years, resulting in millions of people living in temporary camps across the globe. The energy and clean water needs of the relief operators in such emergency situations are primarily satisfied by diesel engine based generators and importing clean water to the site, in certain cases even for several years after the emergency. This approach results in problems such as low security of supply and high costs. Especially targeting the prolonged displacement situations, this paper presents an alternative solution – the Energy and Water Emergency Module. The proposed solution aims towards reducing the dependency on fossil fuel in prolonged emergency situations to a minimum while including local energy sources in the energy supply in a flexible and reliable way. The proposed module is built in a standard 20 ft container, and encompasses hybrid generation from solar, wind and biomass, with the possibility of using fossil sources too thanks to a dual fuel gas engine. The module can work both in grid connected and stand-alone mode. In addition the module includes a water purification unit to meet the water needs of displaced population. A demonstration unit was assembled at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm during the year 2012 as a ‘concept proof’, and is now being tested and optimized for future deployment on the field. Preliminary testing and modelling shows that the proposed solution can reliably support emergency situations, and is already cost competitive with the current water and energy supply solutions for emergency situations.

Elsevier2015

Solar disinfection of viruses (SODIS): inactivation of coliphages MS2 and phiX174, human adenovirus and echovirus in water from Switzerland and India

Alex Dionisio Calado

Access to safe drinking water remains a challenge in many regions of the world. New methods to treat drinking water are constantly developped and improved in both in industrialised countries and in developing countries. SODIS is an interesting household-level disinfection technique that simply consists of pouring water into a PET bottle and exposing it to sunlight for at least 6 hours. Bacteria are efficiently inactivated by sunlight during SODIS, but the efficiency of SODIS on virus removal is much less studied. In this work, the inactivation of bacteriophages MS2 and phiX174, and human echovirus and adenovirus was studied in three different waters, two from India and one from Switzerland. Good removal (4 logs in 6 hours at 22°C and a fluence rate of 600 1.34 kJ/cm2) of MS2 was achieved in Swiss tap water, while less efficient inactivation was achieved in both Indian waters for MS2 and echovirus (1 log in 6 hours at 22°C and a fluence rate of 1.34 kJ/cm2). Both phiX174 and adenovirus were much more resistant to SODIS disinfection and less than 1 log of inactivation was obtained in Swiss tap water for phiX174. However, inactivation was not significantly different from the dark control in Indian water and for all experiments with adenovirus. Echovirus was inactivated similarly than MS2 and adenovirus was equally slow as phiX174. An increased temperature during SODIS enhanced inactivation substantially; 6 logs in 6 hours could be expected at 45 °C and with a fluence rate of 1.34 kJ/cm2. Indirect-solar inactivation was responsible for the MS2 removal, while direct inactivation via sunlight absorption of genome was not occurring during SODIS. We argue that iron could be responsible for the formation of reactive oxygen species which react with the viruses and yield their inactivation. The slower inactivation in Indian waters was probably due to the quenching effect of the higher concentration of organic matter. Removal of echoviruses during SODIS could be sufficient (4 logs in 6 hours) particularly at higher temperatures and for water with a low organic matter content. In contrast, SODIS may not be effective to remove Adenoviruses.

2013

Solar disinfection of viruses (SODIS): inactivation of coliphages MS2 and phiX174, human adenovirus and echovirus in water from Switzerland and India

Alex Dionisio Calado

2013