TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
ON DRINKING WATER FROM BARC
The Bhaba Atomic
Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, has set up a number small reverse
osmosis (RO) plants for drinking water in the villages. Its Desalination
Division has installed an RO plant in village Sheelgan of the
Barmer district in Rajasthan. Another plant installed in Satlana
village, Jodhpur, in January, 2003 also removes excess fluroide
and nitrate along with the brackishness of water. The cost of
such plants which provide drinking water to habitations of a thousand
people is around 7 lakh. The production of water cost comes out
to about 3 paise per litre.
A large number
of villages in the country suffer from drinking water quality
problems. BARC was one of the five nodal Centres of the Rajiv
Gandhi Drinking Water Mission for water quality monitoring and
has provided support for analysing a large number of water samples
to detect brackishness, nitrate, fluoride and iron. It has also
trained a large number of public health engineering department
personnel in the States in analysing drinking water quality in
district laboratories.
A simple on-line
domestic water purifier based on ultrafiltration polysulfone membrane
has been developed at BARC and the know-how transferred to several
parties. This filter produces 40 litres of safe, potable water
per day. It removes bacteria almost entirely. The water that comes
out of the filter is devoid of colour, odour, suspended solids
and organics.
The knowhow of
the RO technology has been transferred to a number of parties
and they are manufacturing and supplying such plants for various
applications. The technology for indigenous production of spiral
membrane elements has also been developed. Commercial equivalents
of elements have already been made with the help of a winding
machine developed in-house. Efforts are in progress for standardizing
and subsequent transfer of the technology for commercial use.
In recent years
the Desalination Division of BARC has been interacting with the
Government of Rajasthan, the Lakshadeep Administration and the
Tamilnadu Water Board. It intends to further expand its contacts
with the Governments of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and
Karnataka. It has been providing consultancy services to several
private parties and government undertakings. The mobile or transportable
desalination units are in an advanced stage of development. Standardized
modules both for RO with capacity from 5 to 50 cubic metres of
water per day and small thermal desalination units of the same
capacity using waste heat, diesel or solar power, specific to
individual needs have been developed. The developed technologies
by BARC are available for deployment as soon as the user and funding
agency are ready to serve the societal cause. (PIB Features)
Inputs
from Dr. P.K. Tewari, Head, Desalination Division, BARC, Mumbai.
