TITLE:
Stand-Alone Photovoltaic System to Mitigate Pollution in Bodies of Water CASE Study: Laguna Del Carpintero, Tampico, Tamaulipas
AUTHORS:
Adán Hernández-Sánchez, Josefina García-Navarro, María Esther Bautista-Vargas, Santiago Gómez-Carpizo, Raúl Hernández-Martínez
KEYWORDS:
Photovoltaic System, Pollution, Water Aeration, Bodies of Water, Laguna de Carpintero
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.6 No.4,
April
20,
2015
ABSTRACT: One of
the main environmental issues at present times is the pollution of hydrological
resources. Water quality is a major factor to ecosystems, mostly those that
support human health, food production and biodiversity. The utilization of
renewable energy sources as solar energy through Photovoltaic Cells is a
competitive and consolidated option to approach the solution of this kind of
issues. This document is intended to introduce a prototype powered by
photovoltaic cells to aerate a body of water and increase the amount of
Dissolved Oxygen (DO) in water. The body of water studied is the lagoon Laguna
del Carpintero in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico. A Stand-alone Photovoltaic
System (SPS) prototype was designed for this matter with the purpose of
powering a pumping system to sprinkle water to the lake’s surface. This system
is a way of ventilating the water so that it gets in direct contact with the
surrounding atmosphere obtaining mean values compared to prevailing values of
DO contained in the lagoon. We obtained DO concentration values going from 7 to
8 mg/L of O2 in different tests which can be considered an
appropriate parameter for this body of water. The efficiency of the SPS was
proved as it showed good performance by supplying power to the oxygenation system
compared to the dimensional estimate. Improving the SPS prototype is the main
goal of this work so that this oxygenation system could be used in other urban
lagoons in the surrounding area without being powered by electrical grid. This
makes possible to locate it at any point of the body of water to mitigate the
pollution by increasing the amount of DO.