Photovoltaic-powered Water Treatment Systems for Disaster Relief and Developing Country Applications

摘要

An estimated 1 billion people are living both without access to clean drinking water or electricity. In this paper we describe a small photovoltaic-powered hybrid membrane system that is designed to address the majority of the water quality problems. An ultrafiltration (UF) membrane is used to remove bacteria and most pathogens, while a reverse osmosis (RO) or nanofiltration (NF) membrane desalinates the brackish feedwater. This paper demonstrates that such systems can be operated without relying on batteries, producing over 1m{sup}3 of clean water from very brackish groundwater.