Novel Tech for Surface Water Purification

Scientists have developed a novel, cost-effective nano filtration (NF) and Ultrafiltration (UF) polymeric membranes with appropriate system design to treat surface water and meet pure water quality standards

Ultrafiltration (UF), which is a low-pressure process, would be useful for treatment of surface water including Manjeera, Krishna or Godavari river waters at the end-user points and disinfect the water which comes from a long distance through pipelines. Unlike Reverse Osmosis (RO), UF does not separate any dissolved salts from water, but efficiently removes microbial content, turbidity, odour and colour, according to Dr S Sridhar, principal scientist and project leader of Membrane Separations Group, IICT. 

A highly compact skid-mounted Nano filtration (NF) system designed by Dr S Sridhar and his team from the Chemical Engineering Division has been installed in IICT campus and is running successfully for the past one year.  The plant costs Rs 3.25 lakh and provides 1200 litre per hour of purified water from any type of contaminated surface water source.

This plant removes all impurities in a single step including excess total dissolved solids (TDS), salinity, hardness, turbidity, heavy metals and microbial content.

Surface water contains total dissolved solids (TDS) below the maximum permissible concentration of 500 parts per million (ppm) and hence does not require application of RO technology. However, surface water usually contains impurities such as suspended solids, excessive turbidity, organic matter, bacteria, virus and algae etc., which cause diseases such as gastroenteritis, cholera, typhoid and jaundice besides poor water taste and bad odour.

Elaborating the significance of developing Nano Filtration, Ultra filtration, Dr Sridhar said that the continuous extraction of water from lower ground earth crust levels caused the majority of ground water resources to deteriorate.

Excess usage of ground water resources and scanty rainfall were couple of reasons, he said. Referring to the benefits of this technology, the principal scientist said surface water would be treated as it was alternative resource to ground water especially for drinking purposes. 

Source: Hans India

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Taxonomy

• Ultrafiltration
• Filtration
• Nanofiltration