MUMBAI, DEC 5: India's first indigenous nuclear-powered desalination plant at Kalpakkam would become operational at Kalpakkam in March 2000.The 63-lakh litre capacity plant, using both thermal and membrane processes, would be linked to both the units of Kalpakkam atomic power stations, according to Dr B Bhattacharjee, head, desalination division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).The plant, having innovative features, would process water for the power station and provide quality drinking water to people in and around Kalpakkam, he said.Speaking at the Trombay symposium on `Desalination and water reuse' here, Bhattacharjee said the plant, costing Rs 31 crore, using multistage flash (MSF) and reverse osmosis (RO) processes, can supply drinking water at the rate of Rs 40 to 45 per thousand litre.``Using the experience of this demonstration plant at Kalpakkam, the BARC scientists will standardise 100 lakh litre and more capacity plants for the future, using both MSF and RO, which will becompleted by 2005,'' Bhattacharjee said.Although BARC has been engaged in R and D activities on desalination since 1970s, as envisioned by Vikram Sarabhai, to improve the quality of life of people of India, the nuclear powered demonstration plant has been made possible only now, he said. In India, desalination technology is rather young and it needs to be properly nurtured before expecting it to bear fruits in terms of providing the ``essence of life'', he said.On the technology of the process, he said, even though the present share of MSF technology is about 48 per cent of the total desalination market, MSF technology (being pursued by BARC in India along with countries like Italy, France, UK and Japan) has been responding to the challenges of RO and multi-effect desalination (MED) technology (which are characterised by its more energy efficient and lower capital cost) by enhancing the plant capacity.``The cost of water produced by MSF has been halved during the last decade but there has been noimprovement in the RMO dynamic efficiency of the flashing stages,'' he pointed out.With an experience of last 25 years, BARC has installed 12 pilot scale plants in the country out of which four are based on MSF and eight are based on RO for desalination of brackish, sea water as well as effluent treatment facilities for water recycling.Besides two Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Laboratoires - Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune and the Defence Laboratory in Jodhpur are also engaged in setting up desalination plants based on membrane processes and thermal process and are of smaller size.
