Assessing the potential of rainwater harvesting system at the Middle East Technical University – Northern Cyprus Campus

Download
2015-8
Harb, Rayaan
Rainwater harvesting system (RWHS), where runoff from roofs and impervious areas is collected and utilized, is a prominent solution to deal with water scarcity by conserving available water resources and the energy needed to deliver water to the water supply system. The impact of climate change on water resources can also be reduced by rainwater harvesting. RWH is becoming an important part of the sustainable water management around the world. The Eastern Mediterranean countries with semi-arid climate obtain low precipitation and high temperature. Therefore, applying RWHS will be very beneficial in these areas to provide non-potable uses such as irrigation and household use. This study investigates the potential of RWH in the METU-NCC. Two approaches for runoff calculation were compared, the traditional Soil Conservation Service (SCS) method and the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) using monthly and hourly rainfall data from 1978 to 2009. A RWHS was proposed to assess the potential of rainwater harvesting. The reservoir locations of the system were chosen with their relative irrigation areas and their volumes were calculated after computing the irrigation consumption of the campus. The study was not aimed at optimizing the system rather the system serves the purpose to show if there is a potential in RWH. The tank volumes were found to be 2300 m3 , 3500 m3 and 1100 m3 with efficiencies of 37.8%, 41.3% and 90.5% respectively and 41.2% of the campus irrigation was met. According to the findings, there is potential for collecting rainwater for irrigation purposes on the campus.

Suggestions

Rainwater Harvesting Analysis for Northern Cyprus
Ruso, Mustafa; Akıntuğ, Bertuğ; Kentel Erdoğan, Elçin; Sustainable Environment and Energy Systems (2021-2)
Rainwater harvesting is a sustainable water resources management technique to harvest, store and reuse rainwater through rainwater harvesting systems (RWHSs). This study aims to determine the optimum rainwater storage (RWS) tank size of a RWHS to minimize the cost of water supplied from the utility network, wastewater cost and the RWS tank cost to attain the maximum financial benefit and analyze the rainwater harvesting potential for Northern Cyprus. A Linear Programming (LP) model is developed to achieve t...
Investigating the applicability of water sensitive urban design techniques for Güzelyurt, Northern Cyprus
Elham, Jahani; Akıntuğ, Bertuğ; Sustainable Environment and Energy Systems (2017-2)
Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is a method used to mitigate the negative effect of urbanization on the water cycle. Due to a high percentage of impervious surfaces in urban area and reduction in the share of infiltration and evaporation, a considerable amount of rainfall is converted to runoff. This increase in runoff portion in urban areas causes serious problems for public and private properties. Moreover, the impact of climate change on more intensive rainfall events would cause serious problems tha...
Agricultural reuse of water and nutrients from wastewater treatment in İzmir Region
Sarıkaya, Ebru; Demirer, Göksel Niyazi; Department of Environmental Engineering (2012)
Rapid urbanization and population growth have represented a great challenge to water resources management, since wastewater generated in urban areas forms a non-conventional source, wastewater reuse is being recognized as a sustainable water management approach. This study focuses on with the potential and practibility of implementing wastewater reuse techniques in İzmir region, especially with the aim to use treated wastewater and nutrient for agriculture. To this end, qualititative and quantitative agricu...
A Nearly Net-Zero Exergy District as a Model for Smarter Energy Systems in the Context of Urban Metabolism
Kılkış, Şiir (2017-03-01)
The planning of urban settlements requires a targeted approach towards more sustainable energy, water, and environment systems. This research work analyses the city of Uppsala and a district that is an urban renewal project at the site of former high voltage power lines, namely Ostra Sala backe, which will have a new energy concept. The latter is analysed based on proposals for two phases that aim to reach a net-zero district target based on the quality of energy (exergy). An indicator set with five main ca...
Diagnosing Neglected Soil Moisture Source-Sink Processes via a Thermal Infrared-Based Two-Source Energy Balance Model
Hain, Christopher R.; Crow, Wade T.; Anderson, Martha C.; Yılmaz, Mustafa Tuğrul (American Meteorological Society, 2015-06-01)
In recent years, increased attention has been paid to the role of previously neglected water source (e.g., irrigation, direct groundwater extraction, and inland water bodies) and sink (e.g., tile drainage) processes on the surface energy balance. However, efforts to parameterize these processes within land surface models (LSMs) have generally been hampered by a lack of appropriate observational tools for directly observing the impact(s) of such processes on surface energy fluxes. One potential strategy for ...
Citation Formats
R. Harb, “Assessing the potential of rainwater harvesting system at the Middle East Technical University – Northern Cyprus Campus,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2015.