Commonwealth Games Village Groundwater Purification Plant, Case Study Delhi/India

Membrane filtration is proven to be an effective barrier against many microbes and is being employed for the removal of particulates to produce drinking water as described by Baker, R. W. (Membrane technology and applications, 3rd edn. Wiley, Menlo Park, 2012). With this in mind, ultrafiltration (UF) has been employed at many water treatment plants throughout the world. Ultrafiltration is a membrane process that employs very fine pores with sizes of approximately 0.01–0.05 μm. Accordingly, particles that are larger than this cutoff are removed, while dissolved ions and molecules with low molecular weights are allowed to pass as described by Lahnsteiner et al. (Freshwater membrane filtration – international case studies. In: Proceedings of the Actualna Problematika u Vodoopskrbi i Odvodnji Conference held at Bol, Croatia, October 24–28, 2012). A drinking water treatment plant (WTP) of capacity 1 MGD (4546 m3/d) was set up in the Indian capital city of Delhi to serve the athletes and the officials housed in the Commonwealth Games Village (CWGV) in 2010. This WTP has the aforementioned UF polymeric membranes as the heart of the installation. VA TECH WABAG India Ltd was commissioned with the construction and operation of the plant (Design, Build, Operate [DBO] contract). This project represented the first Indian drinking water treatment plant to employ UF, and the process consists of aeration, lime softening, coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, pH adjustment, clarification followed by UF with disinfection using UV, and chlorination as the final treatment step. This case study explores the prestigious project and will explain the basis of the setup as well as the technology behind this state of the art installation. It will in detail also look into the process, the treatment scheme, and the operational background utilized for this WTP which will provide a clear picture of the installation.