Abstract
Abstract. The enormous problems caused by the scarcity of potable water and the transmission of waterborne diseases such as cholera, dracunculiasis, hepatitis, typhoid and filariasis in some parts of Nigeria have created a public health concern. Every day thousands of lives are lost due to contact with waterborne diseases. The insufficient medical resources available in developing countries are deployed towards the treatment of waterborne diseases that can easily be avoided if potable water can be made available. This study seeks to investigate the purification of four different water samples (namely water from flowing rivers, freshly dug well or groundwater, rainwater from the rooftops and heavily polluted dirty water) consumed by the people in the local community using a solar desalination method. A single basin solar still was constructed, and experimental studies were carried out to determine the influence of solar insolation and temperature variations on the yield of the distillate for both the passive and active solar stills tested. The quality of the distillate was tested by measuring the total dissolved solid (TDS) and electrical conductivity (EC) and later comparing it to the World Health Organization (WHO) standard for drinkable water. The values obtained after desalination fall within the acceptable/tolerable range for TDS and EC, in accordance with the WHO standard for drinkable water. This analysis provides an indigenous distillation method to enhance the production of drinkable water at a low cost.
Highlights
Most water exists in a polluted or non-purified form with lots of microorganisms capable of causing cholera, dracunculiasis, hepatitis, typhoid, filariasis and so on (Rab et al, 1997)
A single slope conventional solar still (CSS) was used because it is a good recipient of higher levels of solar radiation at both low and high latitude stations compared to its doublesloped counterpart (Sivakumar and Sundaram, 2013)
Following the solar still design and set-up above, the experiments were conducted for a period of 30 d between 08:00 local time (LT; hereinafter, all times are shown in local time) and 18:00, while readings were taken on an hourly basis
Summary
Most water exists in a polluted or non-purified form with lots of microorganisms capable of causing cholera, dracunculiasis, hepatitis, typhoid, filariasis and so on (Rab et al, 1997). The water consumed by people in subSaharan Africa, and Nigeria is sourced from a flowing river, freshly dug well or groundwater, run-off water from rusted iron or asbestos rooftops and heavily polluted water (dirty stagnant surface water) without any further purification (Onwujekwe et al, 2009; Smith et al, 2004). Rainwater collected from rusted rooftops is dirty but may be harmful (Abbasi and Abbasi, 2011; Bennamoun et al, 2013; González, 2012; Lye, 2009; Meera and Ahammed, 2006; Mendez et al, 2010; Norman et al, 2019; University of Texas at Austin, 2011). Many water purification processes exist, including desalination technology with over 10 000 desalination plants in the world having a total desalted water capacity of over 5 billion gallons (18.93 million cubic metres) a day.
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