Vizag to use BARC tech for water purification

Visakhapatnam: With a focus on providing clean water, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is to provide its in-house membrane technologies for water purification to residents of the relief and rehabiliation colony at Atchutapuram in the district. As part of the project, the BARC Technology Display and Dissemination Centre (BTDDC) in association with Gitam University is planning to train volunteers in Atchutapuram on utilising membrane technologies developed by BARC and supplying them to households in the area.

Volunteers will be trained on three main technologies including ultrafiltration membrane technology, charged nano-filtration membrane technology and reverse osmosis membrane technology.

The ultrafiltration (UF) membrane technology removes turbidity and microbial contamination from water and at the same time UF coupled with physicochemical processes, removes arsenic and iron. Also, charged nano-filtration membrane technology removes heavy metals and hardness in addition to contaminants removed by the UF process, whereas the reverse osmosis membrane technology produces fresh water from seawater or brackish water.

Speaking to TOI, BTDDC coordinator N Lakshmana Das said, “We are initially focussing on training volunteers in the R&R Colony at Atchutapuram. The training will be for nearly one week to 10 days. We have already conducted a survey on the persons who can be trained to use these technologies and turn them into entrepreneurs.” He said nearly 40 litres of water for drinking can be processed per day by using the technology.

Explaining the advantage of the process, he said, “Normally, the water purification technologies available in the commercial segment are very costly and we expect the membrane technology to cost very less in comparison.”

“These technologies also do not require power for them to work and this will be a huge advantage. There is no chemical added in the process and these technologies will help removal of almost 99.9% of the bacteria,” he said.

Incidentally, following a question raised by Anakapalle MP M Srinivasa Rao in the Lok Sabha recently, minister of state for personnel, pubic grievances and pensions Jitendra Singh said, “BARC has the capability to deploy suitable membrane technologies for safe drinking water for Achutapuram and Anakapalle. BTDDC has been set up at Gitam University, Dibbapalem, Visakhapatnam for conducting awareness and training programmes in villages for deploying membrane based water purification technologies developed by BARC.”