ABSTRACT
Consumption of contaminated water may result in several water-borne
diseases, including hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, dysentery and other
diseases that cause diarrhoea. One of the ways this problem can be
prevented is by the use of household water treatment and safe storage.
As a result of this, the ceramic water filter, which is one of the
effective water treatment techniques, was studied and evaluated to
provide information that, will help improve their performance and
promote their use.
In this project, two kinds of ceramic filters were fabricated; one
without hydroxylapatite and the other with hydroxylapatite. Their flow
rates were determined and their ability to remove E.coli was also
tested. The ability to scale up these filters to achieve a system that
will provide large volumes of water per filtration was also explored in
this project.
The results showed that, the two kinds of filters did not indicate
significant difference in their flow rates and the E.coli removal of the
filters proved successful. It was also realized for the scale up that,
it is possible to connect the ceramic filters to produce a system that
can produce large volumes of filtered water. However, the effectiveness
of the system depends largely on the individual flow rate of the filters
used.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
The human body is said to be made up of about 70% water. This shows
how important water is to the survival of humans. The importance of
water is such that life cannot be sustained beyond a few days, without
water supply. Furthermore, the lack of adequate water supply leads to
the spread of disease (Guy & Jamie 2003). Water is used in most
human domestic activities including cooking, cleaning, and most
importantly drinking, which is a means by which the water lever in the
human system is maintained. In some of the non domestic uses of water,
the purity of the water is not really an issue, e.g. in the case of
washing. However, for domestic uses of water, the purity of water is
very important, since it has a direct relationship with the health and
wellbeing of the individual using the water. A very important example of
this is when water is used for drinking.
Consumption of contaminated water may result in several water-borne
diseases. These include viral hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, dysentery and
other diseases that cause diarrhoea (Ashbolt 2004). In 1998, Gadgil
reported that about half the people in developing countries suffer from
at least one of the six main diseases caused by inadequate water
supplies and sanitation practices (Gadgil 1998). Theses six diseases
include; diarrhea, Ascaris,Dracunculisis, hookworm, Schistosomiasis and
trachoma. The world Health Organisation (WHO) in 2004a, estimated that
about 1.8 million people die per year from diarrheal disease (WHO
2004a). It was also estimated by Pruss et al. (2002) that 4.0% of all
deaths and 5.7% of the burden of global are attributed to inadequate
water purification, sanitation, and hygiene, largely due to diarrheal
disease. This is particularly prominent in rural communities in
developing countries, where the rural communities do not have any
sources of clean water supply. They therefore depend on the natural
sources of water, such as rivers, streams and dams. Most of these
sources of water are contaminated by human activities such as farming,
construction and sewage. These activities introduce harmful chemicals
and bacteria into these water sources, therefore making them unsafe to
drink, and leaving the people of these communities vulnerable to water
diseases.
Due to the number of lives that are lost to the consumption of
contaminated water, significant efforts are being made by various
organisations and scientists to provide sustainable solutions to the
problem of contaminated water. Due to the magnitude of the problem, the
World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2006 stated that “Access to safe
drinking water is essential to health, a basic human right and a
component of effective policy health protection”. Nevertheless, more
than 1.1 billion people of the world's population still lack access to
any form of clean and safe drinking water. (Brikke & Bredero 2003;
Smet & Wijk 2002; Visscher 2006). Most of these people live in Asia
and Africa (WHO/UNICEF 2000).
The issue of unsafe drinking water is most evident in communities in
the developing world, where there is inadequate clean water supply. This
poses a great health risk to the individuals. In view of this problem,
some methods have been developed for water treatment. These methods
include, boiling (Miller 1986), the addition of chlorine (Heber 1985),
SODIS UV-disinfection (Wagelin & Sommer 1998), bio-sand filtration
(Heber 1985), ceramic silver impregnated filters (Roberts 2003) and
adsorption filters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/activated_carbon). All
these mentioned methods of treatment have their advantages and
disadvantages. However, since these methods will be used mostly in the
rural communities, factors such as, affordability, assessability, the
simplicity of the methods, and the potential for the incorporation of
local materials are very important factors to be considered. In order
address the problem associated with poor water supply and sanitation,
the United Nations (UN) developed seven very ambitious targets (UN 2008;
WHO & UNICEF 2004). These were established in the 'Millennium
Development Goals' (MDG). Hence, goal number seven (MDG #7) is “halving
proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water and basic
sanitation by 2015” (UN 2008; WHO & UNICEF 2004).