Newton Fund - Industrial research on a clean process for delivering arsenic free safe water to affected communities in India

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Arsenicosis leading to skin cancer remains a significant threat to 50+ million people in eastern Indian states of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar through consumption of arsenic rich groundwater. Published literature indicate that arsenicosis can only be mitigated through provision of clean water to affected communities. Pump-and-treat filtration methods, although suitable for businesses, struggle due to high adsorbent use rates as well as waste disposal problems and fails miserably in mitigating arsenicosis. This project proposes to merge two award winning green technologies, viz. Subterranean Arsenic Removal (SAR) Technology from Prof BhaskarSen Gupta's team and Amal filter from IIEST (formerly BESU Shibpur) to provide affordable safe water. SAR does not use any chemical, produces no waste and can reduce arsenic from 200 ppb to 20 ppb, while Amal filter would remove the rest of the arsenic to comply with WHO/USEPA limit of 10 ppb. Three such plants will be installed as part of industrial research. UKPL and IPL are aiming to commercialise the process with further technical/design input from HWU and IIEST after two years' of industrial resarch.