Ten hybrid water purifiers developed by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre will be installed at CSMT, Sandhurst Road, Dadar and LTT stations as a pilot project to provide clean drinking water to the passengers free of cost, according to reliable sources. Each unit is capable of purifying 500 litre of water per hour.
“The water purification units will be installed and commissioned by BARC (through BARC licensees). Related site development, regular operation and maintenance would be the responsibility of Central Railways Mumbai Division,” said a railway official.
“Central Railway (Mumbai) has offered their consent and agreed for water purifiers based on BARC-developed technology to be set up at some suggested platform sites. Based on this, site visits to the Central Railway Platforms in CSMT, Sandhurst Road, Dadar, Kurla and LTT were made to assess the availability of source of water, electricity and space on the said platforms in July 2022,” said officials.
The BARC under its ongoing R&D Project, will install the units but not provide maintenance.
“All the 10 devices at 4 stations, i.e. one each CSMT and Sandhurst, four each at Dadar and LTT were proposed after a joint survey by the Railways and the BARC,” he said.
Earlier this week, FPJ had reported Western Railway’s plans to install 97 new Water Vending Machines across Mumbai Central Division.
“We agreed to take up the maintenance of these units for one year subsequent to their installation,” said a railway official.
The agreement comes into effect from the date of signing and will remain valid for 24 months. Its validity can be extended by mutual agreement between both the parties. Ownership of the purification units will lie with BARC.
BARC will reserve the right to take back the ultrafiltration water purification units at the end of the agreement period or the extended agreement period, based on the health of the units in consultation with Central Railways.
“BARC has taken-up a project “Deployment of water purification technologies in 50 villages in India” for on-field validation of its technology. In this project the atomic centre is interested to deploy and field-test its ultrafiltration membrane-based technologies in some of the platforms of Central Railway,” the official said.
