IIT Hyderabad Is Using Algae To Build Cheap Filter To Provide Clean Drinking Water To Millions Of Indians
One of the major challenges our country is facing today after clean air is access to clean water. There are still many areas of our nation that don’t have the supply to clean drinking water. And most people cannot afford to install expensive water purification devices in their homes.
However, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad have got something for us that can help us eliminate this problem.
The research team comprised Dr. Debraj Bhattacharyya, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, and research students, Anjana Babu, Keerthi Katam, Marttin Gundupalli, Aishwarya Pandey, Raj Kumar Oruganti, and Vinod Vadithya from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Hyderabad.
They are developing water purification systems using algae that can help reducing wastewater treatment cost while providing easy and way to produce recyclable water as well as biodiesel. They intend for their product to be helpful for people living in rural areas.
In the initial stages, the researchers want their treatment to be used by urban communities that have in-house water treatment facilities for recycling sewage water.
Dr Bhattacharya said in a statement to BW Education, “Decentralised wastewater treatment is essential in cities of a country like India where the total wastewater generated from Class I cites and Class II towns have exceeded 75 billion litres per day.”
As per the press release issued by IIT Hyderabad, current water treatment facilities are only able to treat 26 billion litres of water every day.
With most wastewater not getting necessary treatment, especially in Class I cities and Class II towns, the untreated water is then released into water bodies and land causing catastrophic and irreparable pollution and contamination.
Their team studied green micro-algae and diatoms for the breakdown of organic waste in wastewater. This not just efficiently breaks down waste but also makes the water better quality to be used for reuse and recycling.
Moreover, Bhattacharya further added, “An additional benefit of using algal-bacterial systems for wastewater treatment is that the algae that are grown in sewage treatment plants can, in turn, be used to produce biodiesel and other value-added by-products. If all sewage is treated in microalgae-based systems, the total theoretical algae-derived biodiesel production would cut our dependence on petroleum-derived diesel noticeably. However, harvesting of microalgae presents a greater challenge than operating the systems for wastewater treatment.”
The team is currently working on a pilot-scale system with a gated community in Hyderabad. Bhattacharya is also researching with a few Japanese universities in the areas of wastewater treatment.