Clean drinking water is one of the most important international health issues today: In many places of the world, only brackish or polluted water is available. In WEST BENGAL and BANGLADESH, villagers have been severely afflicted by drinking water from deep wells containing arsenic. This fact leads to an increasing interest in new water purification technologies (desalination technologies respectively) The standard methods are reliable in the fresh water capacity range of some 100 to 200 000 m~3 per day. They are not used in decentralised regions due to their permanent need of qualified maintenance, infrastructure and high costs. Here, the use of small-scale solar desalination systems is desirable and makes economic sense. For this purpose, two systems were developed in Munich: (1) Together with CASE GmbH MUNICH, and the Austrian company MOIK, HALLEIN, the TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH developed the AQUASOL single-stage-flash-evaporation unit. (2) The GOR multi-effect humidification unit has been developed and optimised by the ZAE BAYERN and T.A.S. GmbH. The investigated water purification plants are described in detail, operation principles, energy consumption ratios, amount of maintenance and financial aspects are compared and summarised. Both working groups started a co-operation to solve the problems in removing arsenic from contaminated well water. Experiments on this topic showing satisfactory results are presented and a possible benefit for the people of WEST BENGAL and BANGLADESH is discussed.
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