Chemplast Sanmar Limited won two awards at the 7th National Award for Excellence in Water Management organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) at Hyderabad on December 10 -11, 2010.
The flagship company of The Sanmar Group won the “Innovative Case Study” and “Excellent Water Efficient Unit” awards for the successful case study of zero liquid discharge at Mettur. Chemplast has the principle of “not a drop of effluent to be discharged on land or in water” and has not discharged a single drop of treated effluent since September 2009 in Mettur while in Cuddalore and Karaikal there has been no discharge since inception.
The CII Water Awards are presented for effective and positive water management efforts in the industry. Over a hundred companies had entered the award competition and those short-listed were presented before a jury of environmental, industrial and economic experts.
The ZLD plant at Mettur operates in the following three steps:
The process is called HERO (High efficiency reverse osmosis). The efficiency of separation is about 85% as against 70% efficiency in the conventional reverse osmosis. This is mainly because of the extensive pre-treatment and the membranes used for this purpose. Employing the HERO technology has reduced the quantity of rejects to be handled. This coupled with the pre-treatment process enables easier treatment of the rejects. The concentration of rejects is about 40 grams per litre of salt.