Hospital cuts freshwater usage by almost half with Greenvironments RTM

A 600-bedded pioneer in the health care sector in northern Kerala approached us to reduce their escalating water demand, reducing water spend and the challenge of safe disposal of hospital wastewater.

As is the case with Healthcare facilities, it required water in huge quantities for diverse usage. Its daily water consumption in 2016 was 750 kilo litres per day (KLD). The requirements ranged across drinking, hygiene, regulatory & care giving requirements such as hand-washing, food preparation, flushing toilets, laundry, cleaning, sterilization of surgical instruments, reprocessing of medical equipment and patient care, to safety (fire suppression) and landscaping and gardening.

Challenge

As is apparent, the hospital generated wastewater in large quantities. Because hospital wastewater contains toxic, non-biodegradable, infectious pollutants and biologically active substances, which are harmful for human beings, aquatic life and environment, it is mandatory for hospitals to install a Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) for wastewater recycling.

At our client’s facility, though the recycled outlet water from STP was widely used for toilet flushing and gardening, the actual usage of recycled water was limited due to concerns over the consistency in quality. On the other hand, the requirement of water for non-potable purposes was also on the rise. Lack of efficacy of the wastewater recycling plants and process was also observed

Solution

The client introduced Greenvironmentindia’s real time monitoring system (RTM) in 2016, to increase the efficacy of the existing STP and improve the quality of the recycled water to ensure its reuse in its hospital. The RTM also needed to alert STP operators to take corrective action in case of discrepancy in treated water quality as part of their operating standards.

Along with RTM, an automatic Chlorine dosing system was also installed, which helped in maintaining the treated water quality at the levels fit for reuse. With the improvement in the quality of treated / recycled water through corrective measures enabled by RTM, BMH gained the confidence to reuse their STP treated water for multiple purposes such as toilet flushing and gardening.

Outcome

Though the estimated water requirement for a 600 bed hospital, as per the norms of the Bureau of Indian standards was 450 KLDs, BMH’s actual fresh water consumption was at almost double. (750 KLD).

With the introduction of Greenvironment’s RTM, recycled water met many of the no potable needs and total water consumption of the hospital was reduced by 99 KLDs

Cumulatively, over a span of four years there was 33% reduction in the consumption of freshwater.