As part of the Smart City project, Guwahati will get their first facilities like smart bio-toilets and water ATMs. As per the Guwahati Smart City Limited (GSCL) the first phase will have 14 smart bio-toilets and seven water ATMs will be commissioned. This project will cost around Rs 11 crore. Water ATMs, where people will get uninterrupted supply of drinking water on payment, are ready to be set up at the Nehru Stadium, Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), B Barooah Cancer Institute, Di...

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay have developed a filter that can reduce arsenic content in drinking water to acceptable levels.  The new arsenic filter, developed by Prof Sanjeev Chaudhari and his team from the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay, can be attached to existing community hand pumps, commonly found across India.  The filter uses an elemental form of iron present in iron nails to remove arsenic through a chemical reacti...

A team of researchers at Penn State university has used the latest in microscopy to model the internal structure of a desalination membrane, seeking to improve the technology.  The team led by professor of chemical engineering Enrique Gomez, investigated the internal structure of polyamide film using high-angle annual dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) tomography. The image intensity of HAADF-STEM is directly proportional to the density of the material, enabli...

State-owned Oman Oil Company (OOC) has awarded an independent power and water project to Thai energy and water specialist Gulf Energy Development Public Co (Gulf). The project is a gas-fired power generation plant with a desalination facility located in the special economic zone at the port town of Duqm. The plant’s power generation capacity will be 326 MW and the desalination capacity is 40,000 m3/d. The project cost is £483 million, and the electricity and water produced will be...

Brine discharged from water desalination plants into the ocean does not have a toxic impact on marine life, an Australian study has found. Over six years, researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Southern Cross University and the NSW Department of Primary Industries investigated the effects of pumping and diffusing salt water back into the ocean at the Sydney Desalination Plant. The team studied six underwater locations at a depth of about 25m during the plant’s constr...