How IITs are helping people get clean drinking water across the country

Some leading Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are taking the initiative to provide clean water with the help of science and innovation in places where clean drinking water was not available easily.

This effort has been made with the encouragement and vision of the Union Ministry of Science and Technology.

In fact, the Centre for Technical Excellence at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur is focusing on water purification these days. The Centre has also worked towards providing a supply of safe drinking water in several states of the country.

The Water Purification Technical Excellence Centre at IIT Kharagpur has developed a low-cost nano filtration technology which has ensured access to safe drinking water for 25,000 people at three different locations in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. This water is free of heavy metals, considered hazardous for health.

IIT Guwahati has also undertaken similar initiatives. In fact, children at a primary school in North Guwahati, Assam, have benefited from drinking the purified water from which excessive iron and chemical oxygen demand (COD) was removed. There was a stink in the water, but now IIT Guwahati has set up a water treatment plant in the school.

The plant has been developed on the basis of chemical free electrocoagulation technology in collaboration with DST and is capable of reducing the amount of iron and arsenic present in water, bringing the total dissolved solvent and chemical oxygen demand (COD) below the limits prescribed by BIS.