Accepted Papers - 3.pdf - UNESCO

farms and industries hope to get adequate water.
The same situation prevails in many other countries
as well. Even though these towns and cities suffer
from water shortage, they are well-advanced in
various fields such as medicine, art, literature,
electricity, telecommunications, transports, and
computers etc. But these improvements lose their
significance when these places are confronted with
inadequate water availability.
Even though nature provides sufficient water
through rain, People and Governments of many
countries are not able to utilize water efficiently to
solve the water crises. If the same situation continues,
this water crisis all over the world may lead to world
war for the cause of water in future. [2].
Therefore a project is developed and named
as ‘ new drinking water resources with fiber plastic
bed rainwater collection plants to solve water scarcity
problem’. This project envisages through the
construction of many artificial water resources to
collect and store water from rain, considering
people’s water requirements. Each plant of this
project involves collecting rainwater from forests
and lands using Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP)
sheets and saving water in modern lakes, which have
very low water evaporation. Here rainwater is
collected carefully avoiding contact with the soil. So
the collected water is colorless and odorless.
Therefore it is fit for drinking after simple filtrations.
Each plant of this project can be extended over
a large extent of land easily and quickly with low
capital investments. Therefore this project is very
useful in hot/poor countries, deserts, islands,
seashores etc. Through this project, millions and
millions of people can get water for their annual
water requirements.
This plant can withstand heavy solar radiations
and high velocity winds. They can resist the damages
caused by small animals like rodents and rats.
Therefore, lifetime of this plant will be comparatively
longer. This project is cheaper, cost effective and
viable to implement, when compared with other
projects like National River Interlinking Project,
Seawater Desalination Project etc.
This paper reports the constructed model of a new
drinking water resource with land Rainwater
Collection Plant of this project and its performance.
The research paper also reports the future works
and developments of this plant such as a successful
modern lake design, which reduces the rate of water
evaporation, even though it is open. It also reports
on the multipurpose applications of this project such
as drinking, irrigation, as well as for the benefit of
animals.
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1. RAINWATER COLLECTION PLANT
MODEL
The ‘Rainwater Collection Plant’ helps in
collecting rainwater from forest and land using fiber
plastic sheets and storing water in modern lakes,
which has very low water evaporation rate. The
fig.1(a & b) shows a model of this Plant, which has
been implemented at K.L.N. College of Engineering,
Pottapalayam, Sivagangai (Dist), Tamilnadu, India.
It consists of three sections namely
· Rainwater collection bed
· Water reservoir
· Protection valley.
1. a. Rainwater collection bed
This rainwater collection bed (fig.1) has been
constructed (6.1*6.5m 2 ) using sand, stones, fiber
plastic sheets, plastic gutters etc. For this bed
construction, initially the land with the required slope
was prepared (76.2mm deep) and 50 to 100mm of
sand is filled on that lands. Then fiber plastic sheets
were spread on the sand. The rainwater falling on
this fiber plastic sheets was collected into water
reservoir (lake) through plastic gutters. In order to
protect the fiber plastic sheets from wind, Stones
(38.1mm) were spread evenly on the fiber plastic
sheets. These stones also act as the filtration layer,
i.e., stones, filtering the water from dust, which falls
on the fiber plastic sheets.
1. b. Water Storage Reservoir (lake)
The rainwater collected from the collection bed
is stored in this water reservoir [lake]. Table.1 shows
the Quality of the water stored in this reservoir
(1.5*2.4*1.96m 3 ), and Table.2 shows the period
during which rainwater was collected & stored.
Table.3 shows the Quantity of water collected in
one year.
· To prevent the water from evaporation and
dust, the reservoir is covered by a roof made of fiber
plastic sheets and wooden reapers. The water falling
on reservoir roof is also collected. But this type of
roofing is not possible for lake. The depth of the
reservoir can be maintained between 20ft to 30ft so
as to save 80% of water from evaporation when it
is open.
1. c. Protection valley
To protect the rainwater collection bed and
water reservoir from animals, they should be covered
by protection valley (7.6*9.1m 2 ) (fig1&2).
2. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
A model of Rainwater Collection Plant (fig 1a
& 1b) of this project is constructed at K.L.N. College