A Low Cost and Eco-Sustainable Device to Determine the End of the Disinfection Process in SODIS
Metadatos
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MDPI
Materia
Lethal UV dose Safe drinking water Solar water disinfection (SODIS) Sustainability UV sensors
Date
2023-01-04Referencia bibliográfica
Sales-Lérida, D... [et al.]. A Low Cost and Eco-Sustainable Device to Determine the End of the Disinfection Process in SODIS. Sensors 2023, 23, 575. [https://doi.org/10.3390/s23020575]
Patrocinador
University of Cadiz PR2019-010Résumé
The lack of safe drinking water is one of the main health problems in many regions of the
world. In order to face it, Solar water disinfection (SODIS) proposes the use of transparent plastic
containers, which are filled with contaminated water, and exposed to direct sunlight until enough
UV radiation is received to inactivate the pathogens. However, a reliable method for determining
the end of the disinfection process is needed. Although several approaches have been proposed
in the literature for this purpose, they do not strictly accomplish two critical constraints that are
essential in this type of project, namely, low cost and sustainability. In this paper, we propose an
electronic device to determine when the lethal UV dose has been reached in SODIS containers, which
accomplishes both constraints mentioned above: on the one hand, its manufacturing cost is around
EUR 12, which is much lower than the price of other electronic solutions; on the other hand, the device
is sufficiently autonomous to work for months with small low-cost disposable batteries, thereby
avoiding the use of rechargeable batteries, which are considered hazardous waste at the end of their
useful life. In our approach, we first analyze different low cost UV sensors in order to select the most
accurate one by comparing their response with a reference pattern provided by a radiometer. Then,
an electronic device is designed using this sensor, which measures the accumulated UV radiation and
compares this value with the lethal UV dose to determine the end of the disinfection process. Finally,
the device has been manufactured and tested in real conditions to analyze its accuracy, obtaining
satisfactory results.