Another step towards commitment to sustainable energy, IIT Madras set up the country’s first Solar-powered desalination plant

Chennai, Mar 23: India is one of the most active countries which are committed to sustainable energy. IIT-Madras is contributing to more usage of sustainable energy. In this quest, a team of IIT-Madras has set up India’s first solar-powered desalination plant in Tamil Nadu.

The plant, situated on a 120 square meter (sqm) area near Vivekananda Memorial at Kanyakumari, has a capacity to generate 10,000 liters of fresh water a day.

Professor A Mani of refrigeration and air-conditioning lab at IIT Madras’s mechanical engineering department stated that at the plant, the surface seawater is pumped in a collector that traps sun’s radiation and converts it into heat. The sun’s energy is used to heat seawater, which is at 37 degree Celsius, to 70 degree Celsius and above.

The hot water is then pushed into a flash chamber under vacuum and around one percent turned into vapor, which is sent to a condenser and cooled with sea surface water to generate fresh water. The plant uses solar energy to heat water and generate power through photo-voltaic panels. The power generated is converted from direct current to alternating current using an inverter, and stored in 14 batteries to provide 30 minutes of power backup. However, since the plant is only using solar power, it can only be operated during the day.

As per the statement of IIT said, The freshwater generated by the plant has only 2 parts per million (ppm) of dissolved salts. For drinking, WHO recommends water with 500 ppm. So, we mix this water with local municipal water.