Analysis of design curve and Reliability of rainwater Harvesting in a coastal area of Bangladesh

Abstract

The lack of safe drinking water is the primary cause of disease in the world today. Every day, tens of thousands of people die from causes directly related to contaminated water. Many study shows that contaminated water use causes 80% of the health problems throughout the world. Much of the reason is because in rural areas of developing countries, the only water source for people to cook with and drink from is often badly polluted shallow well or contaminated surface water used by both animals and humans. In coastal area of Bangladesh, a number of people are suffering from water borne diseases due to the lack of safe water and due to the intrusion of saline water into the surface water bodies. In some coastal areas the surface water and to a large extend the ground water is so saline that it is impossible to use for drinking and cooking purposes. Desalination may be a sound option but Bangladesh has neither the economic capability nor cheap technology to do it in a major volume. In such condition, many areas almost entirely depend on rainwater harvesting to supply their potable water. Therefore, it is very important to study the reliability of the RWH tank on a daily basis rainfall model. As the water mainly used for drinking and cooking purposes so it is a chief concern that the tank storage volume will be such that it can supply the water for a period of 5-10 years with 100% reliability on the daily basis model. For such study, it is necessary to study the reliability of a storage tank not only for one year but also as function of its whole time period i.e. 5-10 years cycle. The expected outcome of this study is to prepare a design curve of storage volume that will operate with 100% reliability across its operational period based on a real life data of daily rainfall in a coastal area of Bangladesh