Pure Water from Surface Water

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How can we get pure water from surface water?

Only the rain-water harvesting is not enough for the local community and remote dwellers are not acquainted with the harvesting technologies. 

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22 Answers

  1. You can use a priest, he will hold a ceremony of consecration and you can drink, or invite a magician, he will bewitch to drinking standards,
    or in the extreme case provide a water analysis with a technical assignment, and one of the water community will help you calculate the necessary technology.

  3. Nowadays there are lots user friendly technologies specially in the scope of filtration and membrane (like new nano-filtrations) which are able to remove contaminants. Furthermore some disinfection solutions like UV or even sunlight are able to destroy lots of water pollution.

    This video is one of the most astonishing innovative solutions from TED talks which shows an amazing solution for treating filthy water.

    https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_filter

     

  4. A practical and ecnonomic way to harvest rain-water and in the same time to conserve soil & water is the Vetiver System. More information you can find in www.vetiver.org and in Spanish, if needed in www.vetiverperu.org -.

    Greetings from Peru!!

  6. You can use iodine and sunlight and if you can get some alum for floculation and settling would help

  7. Fog catchers is better, In Lima Peru we can get up to 140  liters per day with a  25 m2 rachel net. Humidity is during winter up to 85 %

  8. Is there a river or spring at an altitude above their dwellings? If so a floating sieve intake could secure a gravity line to a settling sump tank and then down the line to a holding tank with enough gravity pressure prior to the dwelling. In NZ we would then have carbon filters prior to the home. Also sometimes when a spring source is used it may best to bury a perforated plastic culvert back-filled against with gravel and then have a floating sieve out-take prior to the first settling sump tank. Both the inlet and outlet of the settling sump tank need to be at the top of the tank and as far away as possible from each other to slow the flow and allow the greatest settlement. These are primary applications but very naturally sustainable trickle-fed systems.

    In metric 1mm of rain falling on 1sq metre gathers 1 litre of water, we suggested to budget on 800mls due to mitigating factors.

  9. This a 2 part question.  1. how do you know you can collect enough for your needs?  2. How to purify this water? There are sufficient old and not so current ways to purify. Baby steps for now. Your water in Gallons + 1. all your raised surface areas, measure S/F X 144 = S/In. 2 check annual rainfall your area. 3. Square inches x annual rainfall = cubic inches of water possible. 4. divide this total by 1,728 = cubic feet. Times 8 (gl /q/f)= total gallons collectable.  Find out your estimated uses subtract from possible total. If short add more flat surfaces and or use less/recycle more.  quick e.g.  HS 60x80=4800 S/F x 144 = 691,200 c/In. X Annual rain = 30 In. total = 20,736,000 C/In. Divide by 1728 = 12,000 C/F X 8 (gl) = 96,000 gallons per year. roof, barrel, pipe, cistern, pump, elec, , microbial purification pennies a month.  While you are at it you might as well get a bio digester with a bio generator attached. process all your waste, and collect electricity for home use. OTG, simple as can be!

  10. I use MgO Magnesium Oxide prill beads to purify drinking water.

    The prill beads come from a deep mine in Nevada. They are processed at 700 degrees which turns them into ceramic beads that do not dissolve in water.

    The beads place a positive charge in the water that shatters the magnetic bond that holds together any contaminants or pollutants (chlorine, fluoride, heavy metals: zinc, copper, lead, chromium-VI, pesticides, radiation, pharmaceuticals, mold, Ecoli, bacterias, etc) and gasses them out of the water. It raises the water pH to 8.7, high alkalinity, high oxygen, and thins the water so that can penetrate the cell membranes and flush out your toxins. 

    As to hydration: 3 glasses of prill water is equal to drinking 1 gallon of reverse osmosis water.

    Great for acid conditions: acid-reflux, heartburn and acne.


    Regards, 
    Richard Fishman
    Owner
    www.PrillyPureWater.net
    808-879-0007

  12. Maybe open air condensation technology to harvest water ,but when doing that dose it make thing even worse for our world in the end ?

     

  13. Hi Robert. I feel like we're missing some information to be able to give you proper advice, but I assume from the remote setting this is a relatively poor area, with little access to equipment, fuel and water treatment chemicals, so you're looking at the cheapest method possible with as little operational input as possible to make it sustainable?

    In that situation I'd use the old adage of 'beggars can't be choosers'. If you don't have a means to go through the regular process as mentioned by Daniel above then you have to be creative and use a combination of options if necessary. Rainwater harvesting is already a good start even if it doesn't provide enough, and it's a relatively simple technology that can be easily learned and maintained by the local community. Afterwards if you're looking to supplement the supply and your surface water is not too turbid (> 30 NTU) you could always consider SODIS technology, which basically means leaving water in transparent bottles in the UV rays of the sunlight for 6 hours until all parasites have been killed.

    Check out this website for details: http://www.sodis.ch/index

    Hope that helps!

  15. Unclear set-up.
    In some places water from creeks is quite clean so a simple sand filtration + disinfection would do.  But I would recommend first a good analytical, so you do not have surprises of "transparent" contaminants.
    All colleagues I believe answer a broader understanding of the problem. I like Brian's answer for harvesting, except if talking of third world places, cutting drums could be replaced by shaped/supported corrugated roof plates (remark there is no disinfection).

    1 Comment

    1. 3ppm of sodium hypochlorite or some VERY small quantity of chlorine based laundry bleach(for very remote areas) would do

      Commented on by

  16. The conventional treatment methods include clarification (coagulation/flocculation, sedimentation or dissolved air flotation), sand filtration, activated carbon adsorption and disinfection.While advanced treatments are often based on ultrafiltration technology.

    Cost will pay a massive role in the treatment process alogn with ensuring that quality standards are met.

  17. It seems the next step is to teach rainwater harvesting to the remote people then don the watt analysis. You could also increase tank storage size to those that do rainwater harvesting.

  18. based on the quality of the raw water (runoff condition), it may cost quite a sum to process it to a form that is safe for human consumption. I have attached a document showing a design that optimizes the collection of rain water and can  be cheaply modified to increase the collected volume

  19. Determination of the path for treatment depends upon many factors.  Some of the most significant and necessary are: (1) The raw water quality, and variability, (2) The finished water quantity desired, (3) the quality requirements of the end user(s), and (4) The budget for treatment.

  20. Hi Robert,

    It's correct rain harvesting is not enough we have to see some other alternate sources to produce potable water. Various technologies are available for water treatment but to select the best treatment process its essential to know the quantity and quality of inflow. Please share these details to suggest the most suitable and cost effective process of treatment.

  21. To determine the optimal technology, you need a water analysis, and how much water per hour.

  22. Hi Robert.

     

    I guess that would depend on your budget. There are many technologies and system setups that could be considered.

    1 Comment

    1.  

       Daniel Antonio Colocho Arévalo 

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       http://​aguaclara.​cornell.edu/​resources/​AguaClaraConceptPaper​-​ESP.pdf ​