RT journal article
T1 A Low Cost and Eco-Sustainable Device to Determine the End of the Disinfection Process in SODIS
A1 Sales Lérida, Diego
A1 Grosso, Juan
A1 Martínez Jiménez, Pedro Manuel
A1 Manzano Quiñones, Manuel Alejandro
A2 Ingeniería en AutomáticaElectrónica, Arquitectura y Redes de Computadores
A2 Tecnologías del Medio Ambiente
K1 lethal UV dose
K1 safe drinking water
K1 solar water disinfection (SODIS)
K1 sustainability
K1 UV sensors
AB 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.
PB MDPI
SN 1424-8220
YR 2023
FD 2023-01-04
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/29355
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/29355
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 21-sep-2026