PAVITR: real solutions for water challenges in India

The collection and treatment of wastewater is a great challenge for some countries. Unlike in Europe, in developing countries such as India, water sanitation can be a cause for greater concern and a great challenge to combat. However, this situation can become an opportunity for collaboration between India and western countries such as Spain, where the transfer of water treatment and re-use technologies allows to end this situation.

In 2019 Bioazul started working on the Indo-European project PAVITR, an interdisciplinary and closely interconnected cluster of universities, research institutes, SMEs, and nongovernmental entities, which works on providing real solutions for the water related challenges via the identification/recognition and establishment of knowledge chains of expertise as well as technology transfer between Europe and India. The main aim of this project is to validate, develop and deploy cost-effective & sustainable solutions to tackle water challenges and ensure the provision of safe water reuse, rejuvenate water quality of rivers, and restore degraded ecosystems in India.

PAVITR constitutes the consolidation of the working line open by  Bioazul in India thanks to the FP7 project NaWaTech. In that occasion, Bioazul designed and implemented a compact wastewater treatment system (composed of an MBR + an SBR) that treated 30m² of wastewater per day for 200-300 people equivalent (PE) in Pune city (Maharastra region). Within PAVITR, Bioazul goes one step further and is working on the design and implementation of two sites (composed in both cases of an SBR). The first one consists of the upgrading of an existing SBR that treats 150m³ of wastewater per day (500 PE) in Dhanbad city (Jharkhand region). The second one is a brand new Richwater® SBR that will treat 75m³ of wastewater per day (500PE) in Aligarh city (Uttar Pradesh region). This way, Bioazul products are present in central, northern and eastern India.

The PAVITR consortium has worked during the first two years on the design of 14 innovative, adaptable and efficient wastewater treatment systems that will be implemented from 2021.

2ND INTERNATIONTAL WORKSHOP

The 2^nd International Workshop of PAVITR took place on December 11^th, 2020 just after the two previous days of general project meeting. In this occasion, both events were held online, due to the pandemic and the impossibility of mobilising partners and travelling.

International workshops foreseen within the PAVITR project are a very good and enriching tool to strength the India-EU cooperation. The workshops are designed to be the needed platform to bring together relevant stakeholders, including industry partners, local authorities, water users, research centres and communities, and enhance the project results uptake.

In this occasion, the workshop main aim has been gathering representatives from the seven sister projects currently funded under the Indo-Euro Water Technology Programme, call SC5-12-2018 EU-India water co-operation (LOTUS, PANIWATER, INDIA-H₂O, PAVITRA GANGA, SARASWATI 2.0, SPRING and PAVITR) to better know each other, gain knowledge on others’ work and objectives, check potential synergies, etc. and establish a collaboration path (i.e., activities of common interest in which we could potentially collaborate in the future: joint meetings or dissemination and capacity building activities, demo sites replicability potential in other locations, stakeholders gathering and mobilisation, etc.).

Not only the project representatives have attended the workshop, but also the DST Project Advisor and EC Project Officer, as well as representatives of the existing running EC Booster for LOTUS, PANIWATER and INDIA-H₂O projects.

During the workshop, very enriching discussions took place about the different possibilities of collaboration in order to increase the impact of the seven India-EU projects as much as possible, especially at Indian level, as well as to optimise the project resources as much as possible.

As foreseen, this 2nd international workshop was a valuable tool to gather inputs from the seven sister India-EU projects and strength the EU-India cooperation. All comments and suggestions made will be taken into account in order to establish common collaboration paths during the project implementation.

In the coming workshops, other stakeholders will be invited including industry partners, water users and communities.