India with coast line of 7500 km is exploring means to solve drinking water shortage in coastal area. Now Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has come up with Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) technology to produce drinking water from a barge which can be easily mobilized and located in coastal regions. BARC has been successfully operating 1800 cubic metre/day SWRO plant in Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS), Kalpakkam near Chennai since 2002. Also SWRO plant at Trombay near Mumbai is operational since 1999.
Now SWRO technology has been suitably adapted to be operated from a floating platform considering the limitations of marine environments like rough sea, wind, space availability, vibrations, stability etc.,
Some of the interesting features of BARC’s barge mounted desalination plant are:
- developed as a technology demonstrator of SWRO from a barge
- can produce 50,000 litres of drinking water per day
- costs 12 paise per litre
- plant of this capacity can meet water requirements of habitation of 5,000 people
- the plant presently at Goa is to be operated by Indian Rare Earths Ltd
- suitable for coastal area and small islands to supply safe drinking water
- uses high quality membranes to get higher output with optimum salt rejection, reduced chemical pretreatment, longer membrane life and low energy requirement
- high pressure pumps of SWRO plant are diesel operated
Limitations of barge mounted desalination plant:
- distribution of water to consumers
- dependability on diesel to operate SWRO pumps considering escalating oil price
Read more from Live Mint.
Here are some related posts.
- Ship as a seawater desalination vessel
- How safe are the floating nuclear power plants of Russia which can operate as desalination plant
Here is an interesting video clip on first RO plant run by Solar energy in a small village of Rajasthan (near the Sambhar salt lake), India.
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