Centre of Excellence in wasteWater Treatment and Management
Centre of excellence in Wastewater Treatment and Management is established at PDEU in association of grant received from DST and DBT through different projects. This includes “Low-Cost Renewable Energy Driven (LC-RED) Water Treatment Solutions Centre”; (https://lc-red.wixsite.com/lcred) funded by Department of Science and Technology under "Water Technology Initiative”, and “bIo-mimetic and phyto-techNologies DesIgned for low-cost purificAtion and recycling of water (INDIA-H O)”; (www.india-h2o.eu) funded by Department of Biotechnology. Objective of COE in Water at PDEU is to develop, design and demonstrate high-recovery low-cost water treatment systems for saline groundwater and for domestic and industrial wastewaters. The focus for developments will be in the arid state of Gujarat, where surface water resources are very scarce. Cost-effective technologies and systems are proposed with the aim of lowering energy costs through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency, new bio-based approaches to water recycling, and use of renewable energy. Reject waste streams will be minimised or reduced to zero, thus protecting the environment.
Advanced membrane processes, including biomimetic FO and RO and layer-by-layer assembly of ultra/ nano-filtration membranes, will be developed and combined to provide new methods of purifying water from saline groundwater and from municipal and industrial wastewaters, providing water that is safe for drinking or suitable for irrigation. They will be implemented in cost-effective modes in systems incorporating phytoremediation and complementary processes.
Low-cost sensors for real-time monitoring of the key parameters important for efficient operation of membrane processes will be integrated with monitoring and management systems to ease maintenance of performance and ensure sustainability of these systems which have previously suffered from a lack of robust and reliable operational data, leading to frequent early failure and redundancy. The remote monitoring will also make possible collection of data to enable knowledge to be built up about long term performance, feeding into decision support tools for design and operation.
Systems will be developed and integrated to TRL6 as advanced prototypes that will be integrated with renewable energy sources under real operational conditions in the arid and industrialised state of Gujarat, with prospective applications in many other water-stressed and salinized areas such as Rajasthan, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. The development of business models will maximise the use of indigenous supply chains to reduce costs and ensure sustained implementation of the technologies.
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A scheffler disc type solar concentrator installed at PDEU with 16 sq. meters of aperture area.
A steam-Rankine cycle has been designed to drive mechanically a batch-RO system that achieves high recovery, without the high energy penalty typically incurred in a continuous-RO system. by-product. A novel mechanical arrangement has been designed for low cost, and a steam-jacketed arrangement has been designed for isothermal expansion and improved thermodynamic efficiency. This work aims to provide an efficient RO plant that uses thermal energy.
Salicornia is halophyte (Salt tolerant) plants that grow in salt marshes. The research is being carried out at PDEU to grow salicornia by RO reject water (brine) with different salinity levels.
A scheffler disc type solar concentrator installed at PDEU with 16 sq. meters of aperture area.
