USAGE OF RAINWATER TO NON DRINKING USES AT CAMPO MOURÃO CAM-PUS OF UNIVERSIDADE TECNOLÓGICA FEDERAL DO PARANÁ

Abstract

The global tendency is to look forward actions of water conservation in order to guarantee the sustainability of this natural good by effluents reuse or rainwater catchment. Thus, the main goal of this work was to evaluate the possibility of rainwater catchment in non drinking uses in Federal Technological University of Paraná. To this, it was carried out physical-chemical characterizations to the determination of the parameters temperature, pH, bicarbonate alkalinity, volatile acids, turbidity, conductivity, COD, concentration of total solids and total suspended solids in rainwater samples collected from gutters of the roofs of building A and C, gymnasium and free precipitation in different intervals of time: 0, 10, 30 and 60 minutes. The mean characterizations of the samples collected in the free precipitation and gutters resulted in: temperature of 21.8 ± 1.3 ºC and 24.4 ± 0.6 ºC, pH of 5.5 ± 0.6 and 7.2 ± 0.3, turbidity of 18.0 ± 4.1 UNT and 25.7 ± 8.2 TNU, conductivity of 16.3 ± 2.4 mS/cm2 and 45.7 ± 22.5 mS/cm2, bicarbonate alkalinity of 2.7 ± 0.6 mgCaCO3/L and 9.5 ± 4.7 mgCaCO3/L, volatile acids of 3.3 ± 0.3 and 6.8 ± 0.3 mgHAc/L, COD of 4.3 ± 7.0 and 10.0 ± 6.9 mg/L, total solids of 43.3 ± 20.1 mg/L and 107.5 ± 66.4 mg/L and total suspended solids of 4.2 ± 1.0 mg/L and 24.1 ± 7.5 mg/L, respectively. The results obtained with the variance analyses and the Tukey test indicated that turbidity and suspended solids influed the other parameters. The values obtained to these parameters were higher than those limits reported by Portaria n. 518/04 of Health Ministry and US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The study also indicated that the rainwater collected in the campus can be used for non drinking uses as in garden taps, pathways cleaning and toilet flushing. Key words: Collecting. Rainwater. Physical-Chemical Characterization. Rainwater Catch-ment. Non Drinking Uses. Feasibility.