Purification Of Water At Household Level

The goal is to produce water fit for specific purposes.

Purification of water at household level.

To treat the water at household level in order to assure the microbial and chemical quality together with safe water storage and proper hygiene practices could considerably contribute to reach the millennium development goals. Multi stages under sink water purification system. Water purification takes place on scales from the large e g for an entire city to the small e g for individual households. Depending on the household s water needs pretreatment before filtration may include the addition of coagulants and powdered activated carbon adjustments in ph or chlorine concentration levels and other pretreatment processes in order to protect the filter s membrane surface.

The most promising and accessible of the technologies for household water treatment are filtration with ceramic filters chlorination with storage in an improved vessel solar disinfection in clear bottles by the combined action of uv radiation and heat thermal disinfection pasteurization in opaque vessels with sunlight from solar cookers or reflectors and combination systems employing chemical coagulation flocculation sedimentation filtration and chlorination. Water from inlets located in the water supply such as a lake is sent to be mixed coagulated and flocculated and is then sent to the waterworks for purification by filtering and chemical treatment. Most water is purified and disinfected for human consumption drinking water but water purification may also be carried out for a variety of other purposes including medical pharmacological chemical. Household level water treatment and safe storage hwts can reduce episodes of diarrhoeal diseases by 39 who 2007a.

It has been estimated that 1 1 billion people do not have access to improved drinking water sources consumption of unsafe water continues to be one of the major causes of the 2 2 million diarrhoeal disease deaths occurring annually mostly in children there is now conclusive evidence that simple acceptable low cost interventions at the household and community level are. The latter is superior to chlorine alone as it also reduces turbidity and organics pesticides and heavy metals. Households can also buy and dissolve tablets of chlorine or a 1 solution of sodium hypochlorite or mix their drinking water with the contents of a sachet with ferric sulphate as coagulant and calcium hypochlorite as disinfectant. Bleach the common term used for household grade chlorine is typically sold at 4 to 6 chlorine concentration and is what you d use to disinfect water for safe drinking.

Chlorine is widely used in purifying water at municipal levels making water safe for drinking for a city s population.