TITLE:
Evaporation Retardation by Monomolecular Layers: An Experimental Study at the Aji Reservoir (India)
AUTHORS:
Kishor Panjabi, Ramesh Rudra, Pradeep Goel
KEYWORDS:
Evaporation, Water Evaporation Retardant, Monomolecular Layer, Cetyl Alcohol, Stearyl Alcohol
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Civil Engineering,
Vol.6 No.3,
April
29,
2016
ABSTRACT: It is an established fact that huge quantities of water are lost from lakes, reservoirs and soils by evaporation. This assumes greater significance in arid and semi-arid regions around the globe when a general scarcity of water is compounded by high evaporation loss from the open water surfaces of lakes and reservoirs. The use of surface covering by a monomolecular film to reduce evaporation loss from large open water surfaces offers the greatest promise among all currently available techniques. This is the only system that retains the water surface in a state that does not interfere with other uses of the body of water such as boating, navigation recreation, fish, and wildlife propagation. Various experiments and field trials worldwide have proven conclusively that the fatty alcohols and their emulsions effectively retard water evaporation and result in saving to the tune of about 20% to 50%. An experiment was carried out at the Aji Reservoir (India) using a mixture of Cetyl and Stearyl alcohol that confirmed 19.26% saving in evaporation loss. During this six-month trial, about 0.18 mcum of water was saved which otherwise might have evaporated.