CONCEPTION OF BIOFILTER FOR HOUSEHOLD APPLICATION IN BRAZILIAN RURAL AREAS AND PRODUCTION OF BOOKLET AND ELECTRONIC SPREADSHEET
Keywords: biofilter; slow sand filtration; water treatment; rural sanitation.
In Brazil, to this day, more than 70% of the rural population have little or no access to safe water. In this context, the household slow sand filter, or simply biofilter, is presented as an appropriate alternative for the water treatment for human consumption, since it presents relatively low cost and operational simplicity, and it can be built and operated with local material by the users themselves. The goal of the present work is to propose the project for a biofilter designed with adequate features to be implemented and used by families living in Brazilian rural areas, considering the easiness of construction and operation and the costs related to the production of the filter. Besides, this work is extended into a booklet and a spreadsheet, intended to spread this knowledge, making it accessible to the whole community. As a result, the proposed biofilter for a household of up to six people presented itself as an affordable option, with an initial cost of R$180,15, which can be even lower if containers available locally can be reused in the implementation of the system. Considering that it has been demonstrated by the literature to be technically feasible the construction and operation of biofilters by the local community itself, under technical supervision, it can be concluded that this is a viable alternative to make the access to safe water in rural areas possible. Moreover, it is expected that these results, combined with the free and wide propagation of these information in the booklet and the spreadsheet, can push public and private initiatives into investing in this kind of technology, going forward towards the universalizing the access to safe water.