A new technology may soon enhance the reuse of waste water in an affordable and sustainable manner, according to a news release from India’s Department of Science and Technology. The new technique, which uses UV-Photocatalysis, can treat municipal sewage and highly polluting industrial wastewater streams and increase its reuse as a technological option in industrial as well as municipal wastewater treatments.
With ever-increasing water crisis, it becomes imperative for industries and utilities to reuse treated water. However, the current treatment practices are inefficient because of high dependence on biological treatment systems, which are unable to bear shock loads. This is followed by tertiary treatment systems involving reverse osmosis and multi effect evaporators (MEE). These systems have large carbon footprints and maintenance costs making the wastewater treatment highly unsustainable and unaffordable.
The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi, has developed a technology called The Advanced Oxidation Technology or TADOX® which can reduce dependence and load on biological and tertiary treatment systems and help achieve zero liquid discharge (ZLD). It can bring down capital expenditure on ZLD by 25-30% and operating expense by 30-40% for industrial wastewater treatment.
The Advanced Oxidation Technology developed by TERI New Delhi for wastewater treatment is an effort in this direction. The Department of Science and Technology’s GoI- Water Technology Initiative (WTI) has supported TERI to develop this technology at bench scale collaboration in tie-up with ONGC Energy Centre (OEC), Delhi.
The technology supported by the Water Technology Initiative involves UV-Photocatalysis as an advanced oxidation process (AOP) at the secondary treatment stage leading to oxidative degradation and mineralization of targeted pollutants. It improves biodegradability, thereby preventing bio-fouling of membranes and enhancing life span and efficiency of RO systems as also overall load on evaporators like multiple effect evaporators and mechanical vapor recompression (MVR). It can reduce chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), dissolved organics, pathogens, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and micropollutants.
TADOX® could be integrated and retrofittable in existing treatment systems making it a viable option as a novel decentralized wastewater treatment technology (DWTT) applicable in upcoming and existing infrastructural projects, townships, commercial complexes, green buildings, and smart cities.
The technology has been adopted by an MSME Company to scale up to 10 kiloliter-per-day continuous running plant in TERI Gurugram campus.
