15-11-2014, 09:51 AM
Abstracts: Water is a precious natural gift and is being polluted by human activities, urbanization and industrialization. The ground water is often over exploited to meet the increasing demand of the people. Less than 1% of earth’s water is available for human consumption and more than 1.2 billion people still have no access to safe drinking water. Over 50% of the world population is estimated to be residing in urban areas, and almost 50% of mega cities having population over 10 million are heavily dependent on ground water, especially in the developing countries like India. Most of the rural people still live in absolute poverty and often lack access to clean drinking water. Nearly half of the population is illiterate, not at all aware of the waterborne diseases affecting their health. Nearly 70% of the infectious diseases in India are waterborne. Indian villages are posed with problem of overexploitation of ground water due to increasing dependence on it as other fresh water resources are dwindling fast. Various desalination techniques are used to purify the water. Solar distillation is an easy and cost effective method to provide pure drinking water in rural areas without affecting the nature. Solar distillation process is carried out both in passive and active modes.