Gradiant Corporation to clean up industrial wastewater in India

Founded by two Indians, the US-based Gradiant Corporation has bagged two firm and two pilot orders for its industrial wastewater treatment systems, said a top official of its Indian subsidiary, Gradiant India.

Gradiant Corporation, promoted by Anurag Bajpayee and Prakash Govindan, is a $30 million turnover company present in the US, China, Singapore and India.

"Our focus segment will be the zero discharge units. We will be targeting textiles, pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, oil and other industries. Now we have bagged firm orders from an apparel fabric company in Tirupur in Tamil Nadu and a caustic soda plant in Andhra Pradesh," S. Ravichandran, Managing Director, Gradiant India, told reporters here on Tuesday.

He said GMS Processors in Tirupur, a major fabric player, has opted for Gradiant's wastewater treatment systems that work on its patented Carrier Gas Extraction (CGE) technology.

Simply put, the CGE technology is similar to nature's water cycle system - evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection. The industrial wastewater is heated, the resultant vapour is cooled to get pure water.

"Under this system, the quantum of recovered water will be much higher than the conventional systems, lower energy costs and there is no need to stop the production systems to clean the treatment plants," Ravichandran said.

According to Ravichandran, the wastewater treatment capacity at the Andhra Pradesh caustic soda plant will be 4,000 kilo litres per day (KLD) and in the case of GMS Processors it is 200 KLD.

"We are a member of the common effluent treatment plant (CETP) in Tirupur. Member units of CETP have to shut down their plants on Saturday and Sundays so that the effluent treatment plants are cleaned," P.R. Shivakumar, General Manager at GMS Processors, told IANS over phone from Tirupur.

He said the company is investing Rs 10 crore for the new plant which will be operated by Gradiant for 10 years.

Ravichandran said the two pilot projects are in Gujarat - one in a pharmaceutical unit and the other in a dyestuff manufacturing plant, and if the pilot turns out to be successful then the firm order will be worth about Rs 20 crore each.

He said Indian industries generate about 13,468 million litres of wastewater per day of which only 60 per cent is treated.

--IANS

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