Completion of Indo-German project “CleanWater” funded by IGSTC at CSIR-SERC
Within the Indo-German project “CleanWater”, project consortia consisting of CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre (CSIR-SERC), Chennai; IITMadras, Chennai; Raina Industries Private Limited (Mumbai); Institute of TextileTechnology (ITA) at RWTH Aachen University , Germany; and Betonwerk Hentschel GmbH, Elsterwerda developed a resource-efficient solution for enabling wastewater treatment in rural and peri-urban regions using modular and decentralised textile reinforced concrete waste water treatment plant.
The application of non-corrosive textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) as construction material opened up new opportunities of lightweight construction and the conserving of resources. Their use in wastewater treatment plants allows less maintenance and enhanced durability compared to conventional construction materials. In the project, Textile specifications were developed by ITA RWTH; characterisation and durability studies on TRC have been conducted at IITMadras; Numerical modelling, structural design and testing was carried out at CSIR-SERC; site deployment was done by Raina Industries. The TRC decentralized wastewater treatment modular units of 2.4m3 capacity developed in the project can be for the use in remote and rural regions and shall be transported to the communities for implementation on site. One such implementation has been completed in Samata Vidyalaya, Pune, Maharashtra, on 6th Oct 2023, through which 1000 students will be the beneficiaries. Further, due to lightweight nature of the material TRC, it significantly facilitates the transport and implementation without use of any heavy-duty equipment.
The entire team of the “CleanWater” project thank the DST (Department of Science and Technology, Government of India) for funding and the coordination of the “CleanWater” research project within the Indo-German Science & Technology Centre (IGSTC) and the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research), Germany, the DLR Projektträger, Germany.
