An environmental life cycle assessment of solar water disinfection systems for rural Thailand (2013)
Undergraduate: Piya Kerdlap
Faculty Advisor: Richard Kamens
Department: Environmental Science
According to the Thai Ministry of Public Health in 2011, 70.7% of drinking water in rural Thailand goes untreated. About 79% of survey respondents reported bacterial contamination as the main cause for poor drinking water quality thus arising the need for a sustainable method of disinfection. Solar water pasteurization (SWP) has proven effective in eliminating waterborne bacteria and microbes using solar thermal collectors. This technology can reduce a community¿s reliance on conventional methods of disinfection that requires electricity or other fuels. This study evaluates the environmental impacts of implementing a solar water pasteurizer in a rural primary school in Thailand to provide bacterially disinfected drinking water with the excess disinfected water distributed to households in the school¿s surrounding community. The standardized life cycle assessment methodology quantifies the environmental impacts of this technology and incorporates the benefits of distributing the excess disinfected water. The results of this study indicate that distributing excess disinfected drinking water to nearby homes can reduce the environmental impacts of the SWP system due to the avoided environmental impacts of disinfecting drinking water through boiling. These reductions however are sensitive to the type and source of fuel used to boil the water within households. The benefits of this technology can be extrapolated for applications in Laos, Cambodia, and greater Southeast Asia.