Environmental concerns keep wastewater treatment industry's revenue streams flowing

Conventional sources of water such as surface and ground water are under heavy stress in India as the demand of fresh water continues to outstrip the supply. With environment regulations getting stricter in India, manufacturing industry is forced to incorporate reliable eco-friendly processing technologies. Companies are finding themselves under increased pressure to optimally use water - a scarce, but, quintessential resource for any industry. Most of the industries today face a common challenge: while they can get the necessary approvals, power and other utilities for expanding their production facility, getting new licence to draw fresh/raw water is increasingly becoming a tougher task. “This means the industry needs to find ways to reduce/reuse and recycle water used in the premises,” opined Mahesh Rao, Managing Director, Nalco Water India Ltd.
 
Besides regulations, the other factor that is driving companies to adopt responsible water usage strategy is the threat of communities living around the industries, which may get affected by polluted waste, deterioration of ground water quality and availability of water throughout the year. Rao added, “We also see many corporates driving home the message of producing the finished product using sustainable solutions to ensure a greener planet. All these and many other are driving industries to adopt themselves to a better treatment methodology.”
 
Agreed Ajay Popat, Executive Vice President (Technology, Corporate Affairs & Marketing), Ion Exchange (India) Ltd, and Director, Ion Exchange Waterleau Ltd, “Stringent regulatory norms, increased public pressure and litigations have led to Indian corporates adapting sustainable and technologically advanced water and wastewater treatment processes, including recycle and tertiary treated water to meet the requirements of water for their respective industrial activities.”
 
Technologies at work
Technologies such as filtration, softening, demineralisation (DM), ultrafiltration (UF) are regularly used for water treatment. On other hand, for wastewater treatment, effluent treatment systems having various options of biological treatment, solid liquid separation, reverse osmosis (RO), sludge handling and disposal are used. There is constant influx of new equipment and technologies which are adapted and practiced by various system builders.
 
Shrikant Deshpande, Vice President, Fontus Water Ltd, said, “The demand for various technologies is different and is varying from time to time. For example the demand for DM-RO-UF systems was stagnant till 2013 but it is now picking up. Whereas for sewage treatment systems, the demand is continuously increasing and is likely to remain so for few years. New technologies like sequencing batch reactor (SBR)-membrane bioreactor (MBR) based treatment are gaining more and more popularity. There is good demand for various effluent and sewage recycle systems. The demand is largely sector specific and sector growth dependent.”
 
Membrane separation processes, although widely used for last 10-15 years in water and wastewater applications, was not the preferred treatment methodology in chemical industry due to inadequate technological advancement and very little success stories globally. But this has changed. “With recent advancements in providing fouling resistant and the usage of advanced polymer material in ultrafiltration membranes, it is possible to implement MBR based biological systems to treat wastewater,” informed Rao.
 
Global solutions for local challenges
But are these wastewater/effluent treatment technologies used by the Indian chemical industry of global standards? According to Rao, the wastewater treatment technologies used by the Indian chemical industry varies. “For example,” he added, “The refinery and petrochemical industry uses technologies, which are used globally or at times innovate and improve the global technologies, to ensure better system performance and provide more sustainable water reuse solutions. But that is a small part of the chemical industry.”
 
Many unorganised or smaller companies, which play a major role in the chemical industry, are normally content with developing very basic infrastructure. Rao elaborated, “This might be due to lack of exposure to the more advanced technologies, which can lead to manifold increase in water savings. The technology companies should also realise the need to develop fit-to-use solutions for SMEs.”
 
While mostly of the advanced technologies have been successfully applied in India, their penetration is low due to lack of awareness amongst users about their advantages over conventional processes, sensitivity to price, etc. At the same time, adopting these technologies to address local problems is a challenge.
 
Deshpande said, “The key challenges for Indian market remains to be ‘local adaption’. In order to keep the costs competitive, it is very important to customise the product/technology and make it competitive by maximising the local content in overall offering. Fortunately, in India, most of the components/parts are available. There is also no dearth of workshops and enterprising professionals who can do this work efficiently.”
 
Let the revenue flow…
According to research firm, Frost & Sullivan, the Indian water and wastewater treatment market earned revenue of over Rs 6,300 crore in 2011 and is estimated to reach Rs 10,230 crore in 2016. Industrial sector is expected to show a higher rate than that of the municipal sector.
 
Popat informed, “With a growing demand from India's population, coupled with a steady industrial growth in the range of 3-5%, the water growth rate contributed by residential, industrial, agriculture and commercial is expected to be in the robust range of 10-12% annually. Thus, providing enough incentive to participants of water and wastewater treatment industry to invest in mitigating challenges posed by scarcity and contaminated water sources.”
 
Government has established wastewater discharge standards for all segments such as municipal, industrial and commercial and residential. It has also proposed tax breaks for industries that save water, thus giving a boost to water recycling technology market. The presence of unorganised players, which offer solutions at decreased prices targeted at price-sensitive industrial users, are putting pressure on revenue inflow.
 
However, industry is optimistic. Popat said, “Despite the fragmented nature of the Indian water and wastewater treatment industry, the equipment market is expected to grow in proportion to growth in water demand across all sectors.”