Rooftop level rainwater harvesting system

Hayssam Traboulsi,Marwa Traboulsi

doi:10.1007/s13201-015-0289-8

Hayssam Traboulsi, Marwa Traboulsi

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13201-015-0289-8

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Abstract

Unfortunately, in Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East region, water becomes scarcer than ever before, and over the last decades the demand on domestic water has increased due to population and economic growth. Although rainwater harvesting is considered to be a safe and reliable alternative source for domestic water, the inconvenience or impracticalities related to the cost and space needed for the construction of ground or underground storage tanks makes this practice not widely common in rural areas and rarely implemented in urban cities. This paper introduces a new technique to rainwater harvesting which can be easily used in both rural and urban areas: it collects and stores rainwater directly in tanks already installed on building roofs and not necessarily in special ground or underground ones. If widely adopted in Lebanon, this technique could help in: (1) collecting around 23 MCM (70 % of the current deficit in the domestic water supply) of rainwater and thus increasing the available water per m2 of building by 0.4 m3 per year, (2) saving around 7 % of the amount of electric energy usually needed to pump water from an aquifer well and ground or underground tank, and (3) considerably reducing the rate of surface runoff of rainwater at the coastal zones where rainwater is not captured at all and goes directly to the sea.

Highlights

The optimization of the use of all available water resources and the increase of the efficiency of the water distribution networks are considered to be the essential steps to follow if the water shortage problem being faced in water scarce countries is to be solved
This paper introduces a new technique to rainwater harvesting which can be used in both rural and urban areas: it collects and stores rainwater directly in tanks already installed on building roofs and not necessarily in special ground or underground ones
The population increase and economic growth in the Middle East region will inevitably lead to a dramatic decrease in available water per capita per year

Summary

Introduction

The optimization of the use of all available water resources and the increase of the efficiency of the water distribution networks are considered to be the essential steps to follow if the water shortage problem being faced in water scarce countries is to be solved. The research activities to find nonconventional water resources have noticeably increased during the last decade for its importance in a country future water budget. It is reported in Mourad et al [1] that the reuse of grey water in toilet flushing can save up to 35 % of drinking water. Households would not be able to benefit from the harvested water unless they have permanent access to electric energy sources whenever water is needed This is not the case in Lebanon and many other countries in the Middle East where electricity is as scarce as water. Before going into the details of this technique, we first study the potential of harvesting rainwater for domestic use in Lebanon

The potential of harvesting rainwater in Lebanon

Nabatieh Beqaa Beirut Total

System design

Expected savings in Lebanon

Findings

Conclusion