In what has been pitched as a significant breakthrough, the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) in Bhavnagar has developed an independent mobile water purification system. Mounted on a pickup van, the purification system can provide drinking water to people in the aftermath of natural disasters or other emergency situations, as per officials. It can filter water from natural sources — with high salinity — without requiring any external power source. Such units are expected to hit the market soon as CSMCRI, the premier research and development laboratory of the central government, has licensed the technology to a Nagpur-based firm for commercialisation.
At a ceremony organised at CSMCRI campus on Wednesday, officers of CSMCRI and the executives of Rite Water Solutions (India) Private Limited signed on an agreement with the private firm being licensed the technology. Rite Water, which provides water solution services to a number of government entities, plans to have 100 such mobile water filtration manufactured in one year, Kamalesh Prasad, head of business development department of CSMCRI, said.
Officials at the CSMCRI said that scientists of the laboratory started working on developing a compact and independent water purification system after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted India a seawater desalination and purification jeep in 2018. “We had the technology of a large mobile system, of the size of a conventional bus, for water purification since around 2010. However, being large in size, it had issues of manoeuvrability in calamity-hit areas. Therefore, our scientists were working on a compact model of the system. The industry interest in such a technology grew especially after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister oversaw demonstration of a seawater desalination and purification jeep in Israel and then Israel gifted one such jeep to India early in 2018,” Prasad told The Indian Express.
Prasad said that under the guidance of VK Shahi, coordinator of CSMCRI’s membrane science and separation technology (MSST) division, Sanjay Patil, principal scientist of MSST division, and his team have developed the technology. Patil’s team included technical officer Shaktisinh Raijada, technical assistant Govind Amliar and former technical officer Arvind Patel. “The plant purifies water by using the conventional reverse osmosis (RO) process with the help of the advanced thin film composite (TFC) membrane. However, it doesn’t require any outer power source as the gearbox of the van has been manipulated in such a way that the engine of the van itself powers a generator to run the system,” Kanti Bhoohsan Pandey, public relations officer of CSMCRI, said.
The van-mounted desalination unit has a total membrane area of 64 square metres can produce more than 2500 litre-per-hour (LPH) of potable water and up to 50,000 litres per day. A CSMCRI release said that an analysis found that for production of 1,000 liters of water, the system consumes around 1.47 litres of diesel at a price of Rs 135 (with diesel priced at Rs 92 per litre). So, the water production cost of potable water is about 10 paisa per liter, it further added.
The van also has a solar array on its roof to partially meet the demand of electricity of the RO system and scientists said that the system can work on grid power also if it is available. “The system can filter brackish water of around 3,000 TDS (total dissolved solids) and make it drinkable. It can also filter any river water and make it potable in situations of floods etc,” Prasad said, adding, “The technology has been licensed to Rite Water on non-exclusive basis but includes a clause giving the private firm exclusivity for a limited period of three years, meaning CSMCRI will not deal with any other private agencies with respect to this technology for the next three years,” Prasad said.