INDA NEWS

INDACON 2019, 07-09 March 2019.

WATER is a critical resource and 'WATER SECURITY' is a necessary criterion for a country's sustainable growth. India has enough water resources but its skewed distribution in terms of geographical and seasonal spread combined with adverse impact of climate change and management has pushed towards water stress regime.

It is necessary, at least now to treat WATER as a valuable resource and adopt measures for efficient management for achieving net societal benefit. In India, the water use efficiency is very poor compared to most of the countries; be it agriculture, industry or domestic activities. Government of India is fully aware of the fact and has been striving hard to evolve an implementable solution through its various ministries. With awareness spreading on the impact of water quality on health, the domestic consumer requires quality at the point of consumption. Stringent pollution control measures and the ever increasing cost of water have driven industries to acquire not only captive sources but also ways and means of recovering water and valuables from spent streams. Industries have also realised that captive desalination/water recovery plants can be an asset in terms of water security and economics; as they can use their spent resources such as waste heat or cooling water return or spent aqueous streams at zero cost for producing required quality of water.

Utilisation of non-conventional energy sources for desalination and water purification are also gaining acceptance. Experience has shown that the solutions have to be geographically distinct and appropriate besides linking the 'quality-use concept' for water. Sustained efforts by research institutions and industries supported by government have resulted in innovative philosophy of water management wherein value is added both in terms of recovered water, savings in pollution cess and recovery of valuables. A number of new technologies and management philosophies have evolved over the last few years. At this juncture, it is felt appropriate to hold a conference to share the developments, analyse the challenges ahead and evolve a synergistic approach towards attaining water security.

Today the growing population, heavy industrialization and negative impacts of climate change have led to severe water stress and paucity of energy. Augmentation of existing resources of energy and water is the need of the hour. For this, an integrated approach is required to augment the available resources, besides the direct efforts to reduce, recover and recycle. There is an urgent need to augment power using renewables as well as create additional water by treatment, purication and new sources like desalination. Interestingly, generation of power requires water and production of pure water from seawater or any other source invariably requires energy. Thus, it is imperative to look at the two together as both the scarce resources cannot be seen in isolation.

Technologies being innovative alone is not sufcient, but rather they have to be compatible with the environment and perform in a sustainable manner. It is necessary not only to address the technological issues but also to deliberate on technical, infrastructural logistics, project engineering and environmental aspects of water and energy technologies. It is thus appropriate to hold a conference to share the developments, analyze the challenges ahead and evolve a synergistic approach towards fullling the needs of Water and Energy. With this objective, National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) as a part of Silver Jubilee celebrations is organizing the conference in association with SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRM IST) underthe auspices of Indian Desalination Association, South Zone (InDA-SZ) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-Oceanic Engineering Society (IEEE-OES).