To achieve UN SDG 6.3 and make the National Missions truly successful, we have to make wastewater treatment and management highly resource and energy efficient, much more sustainable, affordable, robust and future ready with augmentation of capacities within existing infrastructure. Thus, it is required to integrate in current systems, novel approaches and advanced technologies which could help achieve these requirements, writes Dr. Nupur Bahadur, Senior Fellow & Head, NMCG-TERI Centre of Excellence on Water Reuse, Water Resources Division, TERI.
UN SDG Target 6.3 sets out to improve ambient water quality, which is essential to protecting both ecosystem health (target 6.6 and SDGs 14 and 15) and human health (recreational waters and drinking water sources, target 6.1), by eliminating, minimising and significantly reducing different streams of pollution into water bodies. The main sources of pollution include wastewater from households, commercial establishments and industries (point sources), as well as run-off from urban and agricultural land (nonpoint sources). Thus, it becomes imperative for Industries and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to adequately treat wastewater and reuse. However, the current wastewater treatment faces the following issues, gaps and challenges:
(i) use of a large amount and large number of chemicals, which leads to secondary problems associated with toxic sludge generation, disposal and management, (ii) almost all kinds of effluents are treated with a similar approach, without understanding the matrix, composition and requirement of treatment, (iii) high dependence on biological treatment systems, which involves large footprint, prone to shock loads and inadequate treatment especially in case of industrial effluent treatment, (iv) inadequately treated coloured water when goes as the feed to tertiary systems, involving RO/MEE/ MVR etc. leads to choking and biofouling of membranes and create associated problems leading to higher CAPEX and OPEX and make the overall wastewater treatment and management highly unsustainable, unacceptable, unaffordable and non-compliant.
Further, in the National Missions like the ‘Namami Gange’, the primary requirement is to curb the point source pollution across the ETPs and STPs, so that the objectives of ‘Nirmal Dhara’ (unpolluted flow) is achieved. The missions like SBM 2.0 and AMRUT 2.0 require the stringent treated water quality for reuse to be having COD<30 mg/L and BOD<5 mg/L, which our existing wastewater treatment technologies fail to achieve. Large industrial houses could afford tertiary treatment systems to achieve Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) compliance from CPCB, Government of India, whereas the MSME sector is left with limited choice of discharging the inadequately treated coloured water to drains and to natural water bodies.
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Thus, in order to support and make the UN SDG 6.3 and these National Missions truly successful, we have to help all sectors of industries to be water secure and compliant, and provide safe and secure water and sanitation to rural and urban areas. We have to make wastewater treatment and management highly resource and energy efficient, much more sustainable, affordable, robust and future ready with augmentation of capacities within existing infrastructure. Thus, it is required to integrate in current systems, novel approaches and advanced technologies which could help in addressing these gaps and challenges.
It is in this pursuit, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, has developed a novel technology called TERI Advanced Oxidation Technology (TADOX®), which provides treatment of wastewater stream containing high colour, COD, BOD, TOC, dissolved organics, micropollutants, non- biodegradable and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in effluents from grossly polluting industries and municipal wastewater. TADOX® is under TERI’s Patent (grant awaited) and also under various categories of trademark with the Trademark Office, Government of India. TADOX® involves UV-Photocatalysis as an Advanced Oxidation Nanotechnology (AON), leading to oxidative degradation and mineralisation of targeted pollutants. Also, it involves novel approaches which make very less use of chemicals in the overall treatment leading to much reduced quantum of sludge, preventing secondary pollution and providing highly resource and energy efficient treatment.
This technology has been developed under DST Water Mission, Water Technology Initiative (WTI), Program of Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India, during July 2017-2020 and the outcomes have been announced through its press release on 25th August, 2021: https://pib.gov.in/ PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1748888
TADOX® technology for industrial wastewater treatment
Figure 2 depicts successful case studies in Industrial Wastewater Treatment in different sectors and how it could be retrofitted at different stages of treatment as per the need. The TADOX® treated colourless and high-quality water going to subsequent tertiary system involving RO may prevent biofouling of membranes, enhance life span and efficiency of RO systems and reduce overall load on subsequent evaporators like MEE and MVR etc., enabling sustainable and affordable ZLD compliance with 85-90 per cent enhanced water reusability. Further, having small footprint, few hours treatment time and together with resource & energy efficiency, the overall treatment is expected to bring down OPEX by 30-40 per cent than current values. Further, TADOX® could be integrated and retrofittable in existing treatment systems depending on the nature and constitution of the matrix; e.g. for streams having high COD, it could be integrated at pre-biological stage to enhance biodegradability; for streams having high BOD, at post-biological or polishing stage to remove recalcitrant and dissolved organics.
TADOX® technology in sewage and municipal wastewater treatment
Case study Following is the case study of treatment of raw STP Wastewater from the 10 KLD TADOX® WWT Plant, operational in TERI Gurugram campus. This plant is treating wastewater coming directly from a collection sump, having wastewater from various research laboratories, hostels, canteens, laundry, toilets, etc. No stream segregation of any kind is required and two approaches could be there (i) directly treating the Inlet water and (ii) further treating or polishing the currently treated outlet. Since in both cases, the quality of treated water is the same, therefore, direct treatment is best as it saves the time, resources and footprint as compared to existing treatment technologies.
In case of Sewage and Municipal wastewater treatment, TADOX® having Advanced Oxidation is sufficient for direct treatment, without any kind of biological treatment or additional disinfection technology, not even requiring any kind of grey and black water stream segregation. With total treatment time of 4-5 h, together with point of use water quality, which makes it an excellent choice in improving current efficiencies in wastewater treatment together offering augmentation of capacity within existing infrastructure. Also it could serve as Decentralized Wastewater Treatment system and micro-STP in upcoming and existing infrastructural projects, townships, commercial complexes, Green Buildings, AMRUT and Smart Cities Project. Also under SBM 2.0, where the requirement is to enhance treated water reuse, this technology could be used at the polishing stage of the current STPs.
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Currently the technology is at TRL-7 and ready for commercialization and invites participation of Industry and Governmentto adopt and deploy technology at field scale. It holds great potential for point source pollution abatement across ETP and STPs and thus preventing Industrial effluent and sewage being discharged to open drains and pollute riverine ecosystem.
Innovation is the key to achieving SDGs and the technological interventions like TADOX®isparticularly required to meet the SDG 6.3.
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