The Technical and Economic Feasibility Assessment of a Rainwater Harvesting System for the Production of Packaged Drinking Water under Climate Change; The Case of Sari University in Northern Iran

Due to the increase in population and the uncertainty of safe water supply, the use of rainwater harvesting systems has gained popularity in recent years. This research has evaluated the technical and financial feasibility of these systems in the production of packaged water at Sari University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. In the first step, daily rainfall was predicted for the period of 2022-2047 using the historical data of Dashtnaz weather station in Sari and those of the GFDL-CM3 climate model. The daily Water balance modeling and financial indicators (IRR, NPV, and B/C) were used to analyze the technical and financial aspects of the systems with catchment levels of 200, 850, and 1700 m2. Findings showed that aiming at supplying the daily requirement drinking water of the university, increasing the daily treatment capacity of this system has no effect on its performance in this area. According to the financial index, storage tanks with volumes of 8, 20, and 40 m3 are suitable for systems with catchment levels of 200, 850, and 1700 square meters, respectivel The financial indicators (IRR, NPV and B/C) were respectively 45%, 917 million Rials and 1.2 for the catchment area of 200 m2, 103%, 4768 million Rials and 1.31 for the catchment area of 850 m2, and 117%, 8918 million Rials and 1.33 for the catchment area of 1700 m2