New technology needed for saline water treatment
Wednesday, 23 July 2008, 19:30 IST
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Agra: There is an urgent need to develop new water treatment methods for the Agra-Mathura-Vrinadavan region of Uttar Pradesh, where people have been forced to consume highly saline water since the technologies adopted to purify water have failed, say scientists. More than 25 scientists and experts from across India will meet here July 24-25 to discuss feasible and affordable water treatment technologies. "The Agra-Mathura-Vrindavan region faces a serious problem of highly saline water, which is further compounded by excess fluoride contamination. Any new household water treatment technology will come as a boon to the people in this belt," said conference convener C.N. Tripathi. Y.K. Gupta, one of the organisers of the meet, said: "In recent years many technologies have been developed and used for the inorganic and organic treatment of water. Some of the techniques used are disinfection, co-precipitation, flocculation, ion-exchange, absorption, silica-coated ferric absorbents and membrane filtration. But all these techniques suffer from practical problems which restrict their use in the field." "Many people do not have access to water supplied by civic bodies and they are forced to depend on other sources of water, which are generally contaminated or have excess of harmful minerals like fluoride, arsenic, iron and nitrates. We either need to find alternate sources of safe water or develop technologies that can eliminate these substance and make water potable," said Tripathi.
Source: IANS
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