Center for Water Security

We strive to solve water challenges in India, leveraging fundamental and applied research to implement comprehensive solutions that are both actionable and scalable.

About Center for Water Security

The Center for Water Security at Plaksha is a transdisciplinary research center, which collaborates closely with industries, government and non-governmental organizations to ensure that the efforts undertaken by the institution to tackle water challenges emerge as translational and impactful.

About Center for Water Security

Overview

Mission

To ensure sustainable access to clean water for all social, economic and environmental activities in India for the next 50 years, implementing real time monitoring solutions by leveraging advanced treatment technologies and techniques of resource recovery from wastewater.

Research Areas

We are currently researching these possibilities to enhance our strategies for wastewater treatment and resource recovery:

Autonomous Robots for Monitoring Aquatic Systems
We envision to deploy a network of autonomous robots with adaptive capabilities, for use in any environment that needs to be monitored and modeled to maintain the health of an aquatic system, avoid adversities, and design an effective disaster response.
Optical Sensors for Heavy Metal Detection
Indian waterbodies are heavily contaminated, and identifying heavy metals in them is essential to meet the WHO permissible level of less than 0.1 ppm for drinking water. We are in the process of developing a hand-held optical sensor prototype for Chromium (Cr) detection, and will be extending the technology to Arsenic (As) and Uranium (U) as well.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) models for optimizing Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) operation
Treating sewage is essential to reuse treated water and conserve freshwater, and it involves the complex process of treating contaminants using diverse technologies. Artificial Intelligence (AI) models can optimise the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) processes, and we are currently developing and testing such models.
Energy-efficient industrial wastewater treatment using Forward Osmosis (FO)
Many industries in India are obliged to comply with the Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) policy, as per which wastewater needs to be treated and reused within the same premises where it was generated. Current processes used to implement this involve high energy consumption, however. To combat this we are developing Forward Osmosis (FO), an upcoming membrane technology, as an alternative.

Campus Initiative

Net zero water Plaksha Campus
Plaksha University has setup a water monitoring system on campus with the help of DigitalPaani. This allows us to monitor various parameters such as amount of water consumed in different buildings, quality of domestic water, and quality of treated water in real-time on an IoT enabled dashboard.
This will bring us a step closer to our larger goal of attaining water security via conservation and reuse.

Collaborations

Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM)
IITM, one of the premier academic institutions in India, and its International Centre for Clean Water (ICCW) has signed an MoU with Plaksha for academic and scientific collaboration. This landmark partnership signifies the shared vision of both the institutions to advance cooperation and innovation to solve the grand challenge of providing sustainable access to clean water in India.
ATE Enterprise Private Limited (ATEEPL)
ATEEPL provides complete effluent treatment solutions in the field of wastewater treatment and recycling plants, including aerobic, anaerobic, and hybrid reactors for various industrial applications such as textile processing, pharma, distillery, dairy, chemical, agro, food processing, and many more. ATEEPL and Plaksha University have signed an MoU to promote cooperation in areas of mutual interest, especially in wastewater treatment and recycling solutions for various industries.
DigitalPaani
DigitalPaani uses Internet of Things (IoT) and customized sensors to enhance and optimize wastewater treatment plants. The collaboration with Plaksha will enable exploration of better technologies for water quality monitoring and water management.