A new Centre of Excellence on Membrane Technologies for desalination, brine management, and water recycling was inaugurated at IIT Bombay on July 21, 2023. Professor S. Sudarshan, Deputy Director (AIA), IIT Bombay; Professor Milind Atrey, Dean (R&D), IIT Bombay; Dr. Praveen Arora, Head, Water Technologies Cell, DST and Professor Subhankar Karmarkar, Head, ESED, IIT Bombay were present. The new centre’s advanced instrumentation facility and website were also inaugurated.
The press release stated that the center’s objectives are to develop strategies and technologies for desalination, sustainable treatment and reuse of water with active engagement of researchers and innovators across the country and abroad and assist incubation and commercialisation of developed technologies and products. The centre represents a significant step towards ensuring safe, reliable and sustainable potable water sources for rural and urban India for industrial as well as domestic applications by using innovative membrane technologies. The centre’s professor-in-charge is Professor Swatantra Pratap Singh from Environmental Science and Engineering Department.
Water in any form covers almost two-third of our planet Earth. However, potable resources are limited to only one percent of the global water presence. Extreme water stress is expected by 2050, affecting 40% of the population, with a four-fold demand increase in the manufacturing sector and one-fold demand increase from domestic users. The growing population, climate change and increasing water scarcity have pushed the need to find non-conventional sources of freshwater.
In future, seawater and wastewater will have to be used to obtain the desired quality of freshwater using new-generation processes. Many states in India have proposed desalination plants to meet the water demand. The new centre at IIT Bombay will aim to solve the prevalent and emerging desalination challenges with state-of-the-art technology. The five IITs (IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Tirupati and IIT Hyderabad) will work closely with different industries, NGOs and other stakeholders to develop various desalination, brine management and water recycling technologies.
