Chennai being the sixth-largest city in India, gets rainfall of an average of about 1,400mm (55 inches) each year. In the year 2019, it had faced the worst drought and ran out of water yet chennai was still eagerly awaiting for steady rainfall. The drought has raised a question mark on Chennai’s water supply, and questioned the future of the Water scarcity. As mentioned by Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog in the Composite Water Management Index 2.0 released last year “With the country generating huge amounts of wastewater annually, mismanagement of wastewater, which also contaminates groundwater; lack of liquid waste management; poor sanitation condition and poor hygiene habits have contributed to a significant portion of the population suffering from water-borne diseases,”
Water crisis has created awareness among the IT Corridor of Chennai, RMZ Millenia Business Park with 26 companies and over 20,000 employees has implemented IOT Based Real Time Monitoring of Total Water Management with the help of Greenvironment India. The 5 stages implementation of RTM for Total Water Management are Source monitoring at the Tanker inlet point using Tanker Water Monitoring System (TMS), monitoring of the treated water at the Water Treatment Plant, Fresh Water consumption monitoring in terms of the domestic water usage blockwise in the building and cooling towers Make-up Water, recycle water monitoring at the Sewage Treatment plant and monitoring of the reuse water for toilet flushing and landscape.
Real Time Monitoring (RTM) System- A device built using Internet based technologies (IoT) within a network can collect data from a full array of smart sensors connected to the instruments transmitting water & Wastewater quality and Quantity indicators. The sensor array includes a pH sensor, a total dissolved solids (TDS) sensor, a turbidity sensor and an oxidation reduction potential (ORP) sensor. Other key parameters to meet regulatory standards for wastewater management which are being monitored are Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD).
The aim of implementation of RTM was to monitor Water usage of the IT Park and to reduce the dependency on the fresh water consumption by improving the operation of already available treatment plants at the site. In the initial months, water consumption patterns for the site have been monitored. The Tanker Monitoring using TDS sensors helped in ensuring the inlet water quality and flow sensor helped in monitoring the amount of water is unloaded from the tanker. The basic operation improvements have been provided for the Sewage Treatment Plant. The health of the filter media has been improved due to usage of treated water at the site. By providing ORP based automation to the dosing system, in both WTP & STP the disinfection of the treated water has been maintained for further usage of Landscaping & Toilet Flushing.
In the year 2019-2020, The IT park has successfully started using the excess STP treated water for Toilet flushing, floor cleaning and Landscaping as the quality of the treated water has been improved and maintained. On an avg day the building required 570 KL per day in which almost 60% is fulfilled by freshwater and 40% is from recycled water. This has helped them in reducing the freshwater spend by 22%. As an operational saving, the building has been able to save upto Rs. 28.35 lakhs per annum (300 days operation) on Water footprints.
RTM has been able to provide reliable data to stratersise the water management of the building. Through real time alerts to check any abnormality in water consumption & warning for change in water quality has helped them in optimizing the operation and improving the efficiency of the plants.
Testimonies:
“We would measure consumption by making an inspection, tower-wise, and would let each stakeholder know how much water consumption should reduce, and ensure agreement on targets,” says Thomas.
“This pilot project has been hugely successful and has helped us save water by 40%, thereby enabling us to maintain and double the stocks,” says Jiji Thomas, associate director, RMZ Corp.