Study on an economical alternate for water treatment in rural areas

Abstract

The unavailability of safe and secure drinking water is a major problem of rural India. The poor water quality causes a number of health problems. It is estimated that 37.7 million Indians are affected by waterborne diseases annually, 1.5 million children are estimated to die of diarrhoea alone and 73 million working days are lost due to waterborne disease each year. The resulting economic burden is estimated at $600 million a year. The nature of contamination of drinking water in India varies from region to region - bacteriological contamination being more common in regions where open defecation is the norm. Chemical contamination being more common in regions where there has been high use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture over the past few decades. There is clearly an urgent need to take steps to protect our poorer populations from unnecessary health risks, medical expenditures and morbidity caused by consumption of unsafe water. It has been estimated for instance that improved quality of water supply reduces diarrhoeal morbidity by between 6% to 25%, if severe outcomes are included. Improvements in drinking water quality through household water treatment such as chlorination at a point of use, can lead to a reduction of diarrhoeal episodes by between 35% and 39%. As we know that poverty is one of the major issues of rural India, therefore, for providing good quality water in these areas it is necessary to provide some low-cost alternates for treatment of water using locally available materials. In this paper we have studied on economical alternate for water treatment in rural areas using Rice Husk Ash. Rice Husk Ash have adsorption properties which helps in removing toxic materials present in water. The content of silica present in RHA reduces the turbidity, or suspended particle count, and elongates the life of the filtration system-based filter can remove about 95% of bacteria from water. In this paper we have used cement and sand along with RHA so as to reduce the pores of RHA. Cement also helps in binding the filter material. As India is a major producer of rice, RHA is easily available at a very cheap price. So, filter based on RHA are very low cost. To study the efficiency of the filter based on RHA, we have performed various test such as turbidly test, pH test etc. This paper is mainly aimed at reducing Total Dissolved Solids, Total Suspended Solids, pH and turbidity of drinking water in rural areas which mainly depend of surface water and ground water sources for meeting their requirements of potable water