Ray co-authors book on emergency water purification technologies

Chittaranjan Ray
Chittaranjan Ray

Chittaranjan Ray, director of the Nebraska Water Center, which is part of the University of Nebraska's Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute, has co-authored "Low Cost Emergency Water Purification Technologies, 1st Edition." The book provides simple, low-cost guidelines for emergency water treatment. Ray's co-author is Ravi Jain from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

Natural disasters, such as floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes, affect more than 226 million people each year. The occurrence of these natural disasters has been increasing every year due to the effect of extreme weather events and higher populations living in areas vulnerable to natural hazards.

Developing a guideline for emergency water treatment becomes even more important as the number of natural events continues to increase. Simple and low-cost technologies have been developed to provide ways to treat water, ranging from point of use (POU) treatment to small scale (SS) community treatment. During times of natural disasters, POU and SS technologies offer applicable ways for providing clean and safe water.

This guide to emergency water treatment has been developed based on current research, products and field studies to create an expeditious and easy process for choosing which technology is most appropriate in each emergency situation.

Initial, rapid response for water treatment should be portable, low-cost, lightweight, easy-to-use or requiring minimal training and requiring minimal or no external power.

A solution for long-term response should have the following characteristics: ability to support a community or large population, able to purify large volumes of water, parts that do not require frequent replacement, does not require complex training to operate, and uses easily available sources of power.

"Low Cost Emergency Water Purification Technologies, 1st Edition" is a valuable resource for environmental engineers, civil engineers, environmental engineering technicians and civil engineering technicians. It can be purchased online at http://go.unl.edu/q3hq.

More details at: http://go.unl.edu/q3hq