Scarcity Of Potable Water In Indian Villages To End?

WASHINGTON: Researchers have found that a desalination technology called electrodialysis - powered by solar panels - could provide enough clean and palatable drinking water to meet the needs of water-deficient Indian villages.

There is more salty groundwater than fresh, potable groundwater in India as 60 percent of the country has vast reservoirs of salty water underground.

After weeks of field research in India and reviews of various established technologies, the researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. found that electrodialysis, which is not what is commonly used in developing nations, could offer an effective solution to the problem of salty water.

"An economically viable and culturally acceptable system could supply enough water to meet the needs of a village of 2,000 to 5,000 people," said researchers Natasha Wright and Amos Winter.

They estimated that deployment of such systems would double the area of India in which groundwater - which is inherently safer, in terms of pathogen loads than surface water - could provide acceptable drinking water.

Viewing the salinity levels present in India's groundwater, the researchers found that an electrodialysis system could provide fresh water using half the energy required by a reverse-osmosis system.

That means the solar panels and battery storage system can be half as big, more than offsetting the higher initial cost of the electrodialysis system itself.

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