Review of low-cost point-of-use water treatment systems for developing communities

Abstract For communities in developing countries, the majority of drinking water-related issues are due to pathogens from poor sanitation, resulting in infection and diarrhea. One cause of this is that these communities often do not have access to centralized water treatment facilities. Point-of-use (POU) systems are key solutions for treating water in developing communities; they are typically user-friendly, low cost, low maintenance, and grid-independent. Importantly, they treat and reduce the number of pathogens in water supplies, and many POU systems have been deployed and used by these communities, improving their livelihood. This review focuses on POU systems that cater to households or communities, with the aim to examine and evaluate technologies that have been implemented in POU systems in the past decade.