Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Project Background

Back in January, I joined-up with fellow Master's students at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment in attempting to tackle a fundamental resource challenge: how to maximize efficient use of ground-water stores in rural India.

We're working with Piramal Water Private Limited, which uses reverse-osmosis (RO) water purification to transform contaminated well water into clean and affordable drinking water for over 64,000 people throughout the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. RO processing can naturally produce anywhere from 2-to-6 liters of saline or contaminated brine for every 10 liters of input water, depending on how the purification machines are run. Our goal is to come up with creative techniques to either minimize brine production or utilize brine by-product.

The UN's Millennium Development Goal Indicators report that by the year 2000, India had already consumed 34.4% of its total available water resources. Over the past decade, burgeoning populating and increasing affluence have only accelerated the nation's water demands.

Operation under the name of Sarvajal - meaning: 'water for all' - Piramal franchisees provide a vital service to local residence. Our goal is to provide Piramal with a 'basket of solutions' recommending possible approaches to address and mitigate the natural inefficiencies of RO processing to help preserve ground water stores further into the future.

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