JISL in partnership with MIT USA has developed a ground-
breaking solar PV based water purification technology. JISL & MIT participated in a prestigious global competition-Desal Prize & has bagged the first prize & will get prize money USD 140,000. Desal Prize competition was organised by The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), in partnership with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of The Netherlands. Purpose of prize is to ‘secure water for food’ by creating cost efficient and energy efficient technologies for potable water and water for crop. This new technology is based on Electro-dialysis-Reversal principle. The system is powered by solar PV. It desalinates the brackish water into drinking quality water. The salient features of this path breaking technology are:
1. Brackish water upto 5000 ppm salinity is converted into drinking quality water in single pass using pre-filteration, ED-R followed by UV
2. System operates on solar PV
3. Water recovery is above 90%. 5-10% reject concentrate is dried in a solar pond without creating any environmental hazard
4. It removes hardness as well as salts & chemicals, pesticides, fertilisers as well as micro-organisms
5. Compared to RO process, this process is most energy efficient & hence cost of water purification is low & affordable; ED membrane has long life (about 10 years);
6. This technology can be used for community based safe & economical production of drinking water as per WHO Standard from saline or brackish water. This would also be useful for agriculture & will enable
This technology also has vast potential to bring vast barren lands under agriculture using brackish water.
In addition to the prize money, USAID would be providing additional USD 150,000 for further development & commercialization of the technology. From April 9 to 11, five finalist innovator teams competed for $200,000 in prize funds in head-to-head demonstrations at the Bureau of Reclamation’s Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo, N.M. After rigorous testing and evaluation by a panel of expert judges, two winning teams were chosen. These two teams, and a team that received an honorable mention, will be eligible to receive grant funds totaling $400,000 to implement pilot projects in late summer or early fall with small-holder rural farmers in a USAID mission region.
Mr Anil Jain, Managing Director, Jain Irrigation Systems Limited, said “we are very happy to have received this prestigious award amongst global competition and are very thankful to technology leadership and vision provided by MIT team and support of TATA projects. I congratulate entire JISL & MIT team for their stupendous effort. We look forward to commercialize the technology in near future with the help of our partners.
At Jains, we are committed to address Water Challenges being faced by India and other nations and will continue to inspire innovation to bring affordable and sustainable solutions for the benefit to citizens and farmers alike”.
