From Excess Groundwater From Mines To Drinking Water

Published on by in Business

From Excess Groundwater From Mines To Drinking Water

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRTC) has joined hands with state-owned coal mining company Coal India for a project to use excess groundwater from mines to manufacture purified packaged drinking water.

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has joined hands with state-owned coal mining company Coal India for a project to use excess groundwater from mines to manufacture purified packaged drinking water sold under IRCTC's Rail Neer brand.

NMN9K9l.jpg

Image source: Pixabay

Rail Neer is popular among railway commuters, but IRCTC only manages to meet 37 percent of the demand for bottles of drinking water on trains.

A railway official told Financial Express that a mining site at Argada near Ranchi in Jharkhand has been identified for the purpose of setting up a bottling plant.

IRCTC currently has seven operational bottling plants in the country, with a combined production capacity of 8.3 lakh litres per day.

“Water will be supplied from the adjoining coal mines to this plant for purification. Mines have surplus groundwater which comes out as a result of coal extraction,” the railway official told the newspaper.

Every year, all of Coal India’s mines put together produce close to 5,700 lakh cubic feet per second (cusecs) of water, of which less than half gets utilised by the company itself. A further 1,091 lakh cusecs of water is supplied to villages and communities located around the mines.

At the end of each year, Coal India is typically left with surplus of more than 2,000 cusecs of water. “The plan is to put up plants wherever there is surplus water and a few sites have been identified. However as of now, it will start from Ranchi,” the above-mentioned official told the newspaper.

The plan is still in its nascent stages, with a techno-feasibility test yet to be conducted to determine how big the plant can be and how much it can produce.

Read full article: Money Control

Media

Taxonomy