Avaliação de protótipo para filtração de água de chuva com uso de geotêxtil como elemento filtrante

Abstract

In Brazil, the northeastern semi-arid region is known by the shortage of water, in consequence of long periods of drought. Due to the drought in this region, it has become indispensable the search for alternative solutions for catchment and storage of water resources. The construction of cisterns for rainwater storage has proven to be efficient in the struggle against the water shortage. In this sphere, this work suggests the evaluation of a prototype for rainwater filtration using geotextile as filtering element, in order to assure the quality of the rainwater collected and stored in cisterns. The research was initially developed through the construction of a sand filter composed by gravel, sand and geotextile as filtering materials and also one filter using just geotextile as filtering element. Throughout the tests it was observed that sand filters presented high load loss, the extra volume of rainwater would be much bigger than the volume of filtered and stored water, not being the best alternative for the setup in analysis. Regarding the geotextile filter, it was noticed a slight increase in the turbidity (12.3%) and in pH (3.5%), due to filtering.