For some families in Lobitos access to safe drinking water is limited by its availability or cost. This situation can be particularly severe during El Nino weather events, which can disrupt the water supply to the whole town for days or weeks at a time. Our aim is to develop and build solar distillers that will give families the means to replace or supplement other sources of water, using just the freely available and locally abundant resources of sea water and sunshine.
Lobitos is a small coastal town in the arid north of Peru. Annual rainfall is typically less than 10mm per year. This means that there are limited natural resources from which safe drinking water can be obtained. Further, water infrastructure in the region is limited, the supply is typically active for just a few hours per week. Access to water depends on families having to rely on frequent purchases from tanker drivers, which is expensive and is sometimes drawn from contaminated sources.
The provision and use of solar distillers can offer vulnerable families of fishers an alternative or supplementary source of drinking water using only the freely available and locally abundant resources of sea water and sunshine. The objective of this project is to provide some of the most vulnerable families in Lobitos and other local communities with safe and clean drinking water, distilled from seawater using an economically available solar distiller.
All that is needed for the distiller to work is sunlight and a water source. Components and labor costs are low and can be locally sourced. Our strategy is to train local craftsmen to build and maintain them for wider community distribution. In time, the solar distiller can increase the resilience of communities facing water scarcity, by giving them access to drinking water whilst generating worthy employment.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
