New desalinated water Plant in Tuticorin Soon

Under the technology, developed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), warm water is pumped into a vacuum flash chamber and the resultant vapour is condensed using cold water to get crystal clear potable water.

'Not only is our desalinated water of a better quality, but the cost is only six paise per litre,' Dr S. Kathiroli, director NIOT, told IANS.

'Our attempt is to further reduce the cost to four paise per litre,' Kathiroli said while on a visit to the ministry of earth sciences, the nodal administrative centre for the institute.

According to the scientist, while drinking water requirement in Chennai was around 500 million litres a day, his institute hoped to supply one million litres from January next year.

'In January 2008, we plan to raise our desalination capacity to some 10 million litres per day.'

Kathiroli said the Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LLTD) technology had been utilised by the institute in a pilot project of 100,000 litres a day set up on the Lakshadweep island of Kavaratti, where it has been meeting the drinking water demand since May 2005.

'Though the concept was known for long, due to practical difficulties it was never attempted. It offers a viable option for islands like Kavaratti where there is no other source of fresh water and the environment is fragile.'

According to Kathiroli, his institute has another pilot plant off Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu with a capacity of 100 cubic metres per day, which he said demonstrated that it was possible to produce good quality water continuously at a low cost.

NIOT, an autonomous society based in the Tamil Nadu capital, has also been working on developing technology to solve engineering problems associated with harvesting of non-living and living resources in Indian territorial waters, which is about two-thirds of the land area of the country.

'Once we have proved that it is possible to provide low cost drinking water using our new technology, which can be taken to any coastal location, we would like to partner private investors to provide the technology.'

Source: IndiaPRWire.com