Ganga-Godavari will be cleaned with Biotech-System
IIT (BHU) gets responsibility under Indo European Union Project 'SPRING'
Ganga-Godavari will be cleaned with Biotech-System
Varanasi: Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) will play an important role to develop a biotechnology-based water treatment system for the purification of sewage water coming into the Ganga and Godavri rivers under the Indo-European funded project.
The project is funded by the Government of India, Ministry of Science & Technology, Department of Biotechnology with the collaboration of European Union. The sponsored project ‘SPRING-Strategic Planning for Water Resources and Implementation of Novel Biotechnical Treatment solutions and Good Practices (SPRING)’ is funded for a period of three years starting June 2020.
The IIT (BHU) director Prof Pramod Kumar Jain said that the Institute will perform Geo spatial analysis with respect to land use-land coverage and water resources for identification of point and non-point sources of pollution of water bodies using integrated remote sensing for river Ganga near Varanasi. Further, field trials and testing of prototypes will be done at selected sites of river Godavari delta and also river Ganga. The developed system can be utilized by Municipality, NGOs or State Water Board.
He further informed that the specific goal of the project is to develop a prototype of the innovative low-cost advanced bio-oxidation treatment system for polluted water. For river Ganga, the target is to cover major sources of pollution from upstream of the Varanasi city to the downstream up to the confluence of river Gomati near Kaithy. The contributory catchments of river Assi and Varuna will also be part of the study.
Ganga-Godavari will be cleaned with Biotech-System
Jain said that the project ‘SPRING’ is unique because for the first time, it envisages to apply geo spatial analysis with respect to land use, land cover and water resources for identification of point and non-point sources of pollution using integrated remote sensing in River Godavari delta and River Ganga near Varanasi for monitoring, develop enzyme biotechnology based advanced oxidation process (AOP) for treatment of organic pollutants, and microbial fuel cell (MFC) based novel bio sensing systems for identification of new pollutant in the study area. It also seeks developing stakeholders’ decision making and management framework with municipality and NGOs, State Water Board etc. to apply the developed remediation system in the field for application.
In this project Prof. Prabhat Kumar Singh, Dr Shishir Gaur and Dr Anurag Ohri from Department of Civil Engineering are the lead persons from IIT (BHU) Varanasi. Other Indian partners of the Project include IIT Guwahati, IIT Kharagpur and other academic & research institutes. Prof. Sanjukta Patra from IIT Guwahati is the Indian Coordinator for the project. Foreign Partners involved in the project are University of Tromsø, Norway (UIT), University of PECS (UP), Hungary, Northern Research Institute, Narvik AS (NORUT Narvik), Norway, INESC TEC, Portugal, ENVIROINVEST, Hungary. The foreign partner will share their expertise related to Bio technology-based treatment systems and sensor systems for developing the prototype related to Indian environmental condition and properties of sewage coming into the river Ganga and Godavri.
