30
Jun 2017
From Lao Ban’s desk – Week # 26
Water Water everywhere but not a drop to drink so said the sailor in The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge. He of course was referring to the sea. Giant strides in technology since then has seen the Gulf countries setting up huge desalination plants to fuel their water requirement in a rain starved part of the world. India is now leading the way in processing potable water from sea water and recently the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, 100 kms south of Chennai, announced a process using waste steam from their nuclear reactor to purify sea water with an output of up to 6 million litres per day! Though process costs today are not as high as what they were earlier, along comes heart warming news of an Indian American high school student in Portland, Oregon who based on a science experiment in his classroom has come up with an even more cheaper method to turn salt water into drinkable fresh water.
Leather Tanning uses up a lot of water. We are now working closely with the Central Leather Research Institute, Chennai to look at possibilities of using desalinated water in our processes without any change in quality parameters as well as compliances.
This will be one more step towards environmental sustainability.