Desalination 200 (2006) 322–324 Presented at EUROMEMBRANE 2006, 24–28 September 2006, Giardini Naxos, Italy. 0011-9164/06/$– See front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. UF-designed facility location protocol for a potable water treatment in developing countries J.M. Arnal a *, M. Sancho, B. García-Fayos, J. Lora, G. Verdú Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Department, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n 46022 Valencia, Spain Tel. +34-963879633; Fax +34-963877639; email: jarnala@iqn.upv.es Received 29 October 2005; accepted 4 March 2006 1. Introduction In developing countries, the high cost of water treatment plants and non-easy access to technology makes people drink water from riv- ers and lakes. This water contains a certain amount of virus, bacteria and other pathogenic microorganisms, without any treatment. Today, some 1.1 billion people worldwide still lack safe water and 2.6 billion have no sani- tation [1]. The worst situation is for children, 30% of them die every year from water borne diseases spread by poor sanitation and lack of basic hygiene awareness and 90% of them are under 5 years of age. In Ecuador, 30 of every 1000 children born die before the age of 5 mainly due to preventable causes with potable water supply [2]. One of the main objectives in the AQUAPOT project is to reduce the number of illnesses related to the intake of non-drinkable water. Consequently, AQUAPOT has designed, located and installed three different UF-membrane facilities in the province of Azuay (Ecuador) as a cost-effective water supply option to obtain safe water. 2. Methods The methodology analyses the environmen- tal conditions where the UF facility is located and operating. 2.1. Used technology The potabilization units are based in the membrane technology and resume the previous experimental works done in AQUAPOT project [3–5]. These works have shown that UF is a suitable membrane technology to obtain safe potable water from surface waters [6] and has allowed to select the best UF membrane accord- ing to the feed water characteristics. To guarantee the right operating conditions, the main objective is aimed to study and evalu- ate the environmental conditions where the UF facility is located. 2.2. Application protocol The protocol that is followed for the mem- brane technology application is summarized in the next items. *Corresponding author. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2006.03.322