a. Mr. Mohammad is JAL’s water delivery man.

b. Mr. Krishna briefing Mr. Mohammad on his work.

c. One of the JAL’s 20 liter  water bottles used for the prototype.

d. JAL’s water delivery van.

Team JAL (VIT-UIC Team 3), of the Acara Challenge 2010 has been working for a technological solution for areas that have severe and untreatable contamination in water. Jal aims to provide economical, high quality drinking water to the poor people with a hassle free distribution system. The team has visited the local tanneries, villages and the effluent treatment plant (ETP) where they observed that the tannery water is being treated by the ETP in such a manner that the output water is high in complex salt content which is discharged into the nearby dried river i.e. Palar river.

In the present scenario the people consume the untreated underground water and suffer with various dangerous diseases. The government has not taken any steps to ensure clean drinking water. Moreover the water supplied by the government is also untreated underground water which is supplied for 2 hours every alternate day. A lot of time is wasted in collecting the water from the government public taps which are located far away from the households.

All these inferred that the only source of water available to be treated to provide clean drinking water to the poor is the underground water.

Jal has proposed an economic, feasible & scalable solution to this problem. The team intends to setup a Solar Distillation Plant which has been designed in such a way that its efficiency has become more than 20 times the existing systems and it can supply water to 4 to 5 villages at a time. The team is presently working on a prototype which could demonstrate the efficiency of the system.

The water that Jal would supply will cost around Rs.5 for 25 Liters and this water will be delivered to the customers door step every day. This system can be replicated and implemented in several places in several countries and hence it is a scalable model. Jal specifically targets the low income population who earn on a daily wage basis; these people are the ones who suffer the most. The project intends to solve their water problems and also setup community centers which could assist the people in various ways such as agriculture, irrigation, health care, employment etc.

Himanshu, the team leader of the Jal Team from VIT University says, “Acara Challenge has given us the opportunity to help the society and make a difference. We have learnt the importance of team work and the art of doing it effectively as we have our team mates in Chicago, USA and we need to be in constant interaction with them via emails, Skype, Facebook, Acara Base Camp etc. The most difficult task in the beginning was making the team in USA understand the ground situation of the villages in India. We had to send many videos and long emails explaining how things are here in India, also we suggested our team to watch some Indian movies which can give them a clearer idea. Once we could get them to understand the ground situation, we had the ball rolling and we came up with a technological solution for these problems i.e. Solar Distillation. I am very lucky to have excellent team mates as they actively contribute towards the project and they have become my very good friends for life. Priya Sharma, Krishna & Parth Vora from VIT, Vellore and Jane Miller & Kyriakos Anastasopoulos from UIC, Chicago. We have learnt a lot from this experience and we are determined to implement our proposal as early and effectively as possible.”

The following process was observed at the plant:

Storage Tank: There are two ways through which the effluent from the tanneries is received

1. Through Gravity
2. Pressured Pumping

A sieve removes all solid particles larger than 6mm in size.

Pre-settlers:

These are to remove only the core solids. The sludge received from here is the most dangerous, because there is no method developed to treat it and is highly Bio Hazardous Material.

Rotary Fine Screen:

This removes particles greater than 3mm in size and in the next phase it mixes the whole sludge to make it homogenous.

1. The chemical processing is the next stage where alum, lime, polyelectrolyte are added.
2. The biological processing is the next phase where oxygen is added to the sludge
3. The next step involves the clarifier which allows the solid insoluble particles to settle down and release the remaining water to the canal

Notes:

1. The water sent into the canals is used for specific irrigation purposes but is mostly hazardous as it may destroy the crop completely.
2. The major air pollutant that the tanneries give out is the Hydrogen Sulphide gas which makes surrounding area smell like a rotten egg!!!
3. Every tannery has 3 phases of treatment before releasing the sludge, here maximum chromium is re extracted and also heavy particles are removed. The remainder of the effluent is sent to the ETP.
4. There are also chemical factories in Ranipet which pollute the underground water.
5. Most of the tanneries send the waste through pipes to the ETP.
6. The main problem of the existing ETP is removal of chloride from water.

Advancements:

1. Reverse Osmosis process is being setup to enable zero water discharge in a period of 6 months and the project is half way through construction.
2. This process will ensure that there is no effluent released to the barren ground.
3. Hence there is no point of treatment of effluent water as there isn’t going to be any in a period of 6 months.

Problems:

1. The underground water which has been polluted for many years now will continue to be contaminated for many years to come even if effluent discharge is stopped from the tanneries.
2. The effluents from the surrounding chemical factories are still not being treated and this will continue polluting the underground water.
3. The drinking water problem will remain unsolved if no action is taken.
4. Rainwater cannot be an option as the area has very low rainfall.
5. There are no rivers nearby to construct a pipeline for water.
6. The humidity is very low hence evaporation is fast and air dehumidification cannot be an option for water source.

Possible Solutions:

1. As the effluent discharge from tanneries is shortly going to be stopped, best source of water which can be treated is the Underground water.
2. The effluents from the chemical factories cannot be treated as they contain complex chemicals and different chemicals at different times.
3. Treated water can be sold easily as families are ready to accept cheaper and efficient water treatment techniques.