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LOw-cost innovative Technology for water quality monitoring and water resources management for Urban and rural water Systems in India

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LOTUS (LOw-cost innovative Technology for water quality monitoring and water resources management for Urban and rural water Systems in India)

Reporting period: 2020-08-01 to 2022-01-31

India is facing a water and sanitation crisis. While a staggering 17% of the world population resides in India, the country’s share of world water resources is small — only 4% — which creates a significant gap between water demand and availability. Also, the availability of treated water and its distribution to houses without further contamination is observed to be a challenging task. To overcome such issues, the Jal Jeevan Mission is envisioned by the Government of India to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections by 2024 to all households in rural India.
With large investments in the water infrastructure in progress, there is still an immediate need to increase the reliability of the supply and to assure the quality of drinking water, to monitor surface and ground water and to optimize the use of water through cost-effective sensing, monitoring and management technologies. LOTUS addresses these challenges.
The LOTUS project has five high-level objectives:
1. To co-develop an innovative multi-parameter water quality sensor
2. To co-design a suite of software tools for water system monitoring and management based upon a platform for cloud-based implementation.
3. To validate and showcase the LOTUS sensor and software solutions in a variety of Indian use cases
4. To co-design business models and market uptake strategies of the LOTUS sensor and solutions to achieve real impacts of the LOTUS innovations.
5. To promote social innovation, by introducing co-creation, co-design and co-development, with lasting social, technological and business impacts related to water supply and usage in India, leading to viable, affordable and socially acceptable products and solutions, capacity development, job creation, and the reduction of social inequalities.
Objective 1:
The development of the sensor is progressing in several phases. For phase one, the measurement of temperature, conductivity, pH and free chlorine were targeted. A carbon-nanotube-based multi-parameter primary sensor was developed together with analog and digital electronics, proper shielding and data processing algorithms. 15 sensors were produced and tested. In addition, the so-called LOTUS box was developed that connects the sensor to IT systems using various data transmission protocols.
Objective 2:
The project has developed several software solutions for the monitoring and management of water systems, including an algorithm for sensor placement in piped water systems, an algorithm for the detection of abnormal situations in large piped water systems, a complete suite of tools for the management of tanker-based water distribution systems to make the delivery of water efficient and safe, a software for the optimization of the amount of water used in irrigation, and advanced control algorithms for waste-water treatment plants.
Objective 3:
Due to the COVID pandemic, the development of the LOTUS sensor and the implementation of solutions have been slowed down considerably. Field testing of the sensor will start in the fourth year of the project after further improvements of the sensor hardware and software. Some solutions will temporarily be tested with other commercially available sensors. The installation of a sanitation system designed by partner AUTARCON in water tankers will take place within the next year.
Objective 4:
For the application areas, co-creation workshops were organized involving end-users, local population and technology providers to specify the solutions to match the interest of the users and system operators. There is a very strong interest by local authorities, system operators (for tanker systems), and industrial partners in the solutions. For some solutions, further usage by Indian companies has already been assured. In the further development of the sensor, Indian providers of electronics as well as European manufacturers will be involved. The project is performing an investigation of the potential of the sensor in other markets than drinking water systems with the goal to achieve large scale production to significantly reduce the cost per sensor. First negotiations in this direction are under way, involving partners from India and from the EU.
Objective 5:
During the first reporting period, stakeholder engagement was achieved through precise mapping of the stakeholders in India, in general and in the use cases. Co-creation and technical workshops were organised to gather EU and Indian teams in 3 out of 5 use cases. They enabled to present the project and co-create its functionalities with the final users. The second reporting period focused on the detailed household survey to better understand the socio-economic characteristics of the LOTUS final users.
The main goal of the project is to develop improved smart and comprehensive solutions for quality monitoring and management of quantity and quality of water resources.
The core element of the solutions is the novel LOTUS sensor, a multi-parametric sensor based on carbon nanotube technology. By combining several sensing elements in one sensor, a significant reduction of the cost of the single measurements is expected. Besides this, mass manufacturing for specific market segments is expected to drastically lower the cost for specific use cases. The availability of such a sensor will strongly impact the safety of drinking water and reduce or abolish the need for individual water treatment. At the end, the project will deliver a robust and reliable sensor for important target parameters such as pH and free chlorine, and prototypes for the measurement of further properties. It is expected that the sensor will be manufactured largely in India and be marketed by Indian companies. The LOTUS sensor will also enable better monitoring of groundwater and river water, preventing health issues from the consumption of ground water and supporting measures to improve the water quality in rivers.
The second component of the solutions are advanced algorithms, implemented in software modules, for the monitoring and management of water systems. Such algorithms have been developed. All these solutions are targeting large markets and there is strong commercial interest by Indian companies to take up, use and market the solutions. This will improve the quality of water for millions of people and avoid wastage of potable water on a large scale.
In addition, the LOTUS project contributes to the development of improved novel drinking water purification technologies at an affordable cost both in rural and urban regions, using chlorination units on mobile tankers. As a tanker-based provision of drinking water is a reality for millions of people in India, this has a huge impact.
LOTUS also addressed the improvement of wastewater treatment systems by novel control algorithms that process information gained by multi-parametric sensors. This will lead to a better quality of the effluent water and to the saving of energy.
LOTUS is working on in-depth stakeholder engagement to createsolutions that truly meet their needs and prepare the commercialization of the future commercial solution.
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