Performance of rainwater harvesting system based on roof catchment area and storage tank capacity

Abstract

Increasing population growth has created problems in water resources. Natural water resources become progressively more expensive and difficult to develop. In addition, it is also becoming increasingly polluted and difficult to obtain. Many countries shown a resurgent interest in the use of rainwater harvesting (RWH) technique to overcome these problems. There are several factors that will influence the RWH performance, such as the rainfall, catchment area, storage tank capacity, and water demand. The performance parameter determines by the volumetric reliability, time reliability, and yield. The RWH system used in this study is a simple RWH system that utilizes roof as a catchment area, pipes as a distribution system and tank as a storage. An analysis is carried out to investigate the effect of altering the large of the catchment area and storage tank capacity to the RWH system performance parameters. A suitable behavioral model based on the water balance method is implemented to evaluate the inflow, outflow, and the storage volume. Results demonstrate that with up to 15 years daily rainfall data in 15 cities in Indonesia, the most influential parameters on the performance of RWH system is the time reliability.