Manage Water Smartly With Composites

The notion of the "smart city" has been gaining attention around the world and India is not an exception. In 2015, the Indian government announced an ambitious plan to develop 100 smart cities, with a commitment of spending $7.27 billion over the next five years. The infrastructure overhaul would include creating intelligent transport systems, smart grids, smart waste management, and smart water management.

Today, the urban water system in India is marred by limited water resources, ageing infrastructure, non-revenue water losses resulting in contaminated and irregular water supply.

On the other hand, contamination of surface and groundwater resources is rampant in rural/urban India with wastewater entering fresh water bodies or seeping into groundwater.

For smart cities, the goals of an integrated urban water management should be:

• Ensure access to safe water, minimising the losses in the urban water supply system and making a more efficient water supply system.

• Managing, treating and reusing the wastewater to control pollution of the stressed water sources and preventing water-borne diseases. Over the years, composites have proven their value in the most demanding environments due to their superior strength, stiffness, adaptability and resistance against challenging corrosive conditions.

In water management for smart cities, composites can play significant roles by ensuring low water absorption and excellent chemical resistance across their applications in wastewater and gray water treatment equipment, wastewater discharge systems, and rainwater harvesting tanks.