Rapid urbanization, technological advancements, infrastructural development, and population growth have increased the demand for fresh and processed water across the globe. However, due to the limited availability of freshwater resources, there is a growing focus on wastewater treatment and reuse to meet the rising demand. This is expected to boost market growth in the near future. Today, technology plays a key role in wastewater treatment.
Through several aerobic and anaerobic techniques and post membrane based treatment, wastewater can be treated for reuse. With advancements in technologies over time, new wastewater treatment techniques have been deployed by various urban local bodies (ULBs) and industrial clusters. These technologies have become more cost-effective, efficient, and require less land, and result in an odor-free process.
Sharing his deep insights on the market and its projected growth for waste water treatment plants, V. Y Jose, Managing Director of SepraTECH says, “In India, there is a projected USD 4.3 billion potential for the market of wastewater treatment plants owing to the increase in the demand for sophisticated domestic wastewater treatment plants as well as industrial effluent treatment plants.
The implementation of strict government regulations, like zero liquid discharge regulation, specifically for industrial effluents has made it mandatory for industries to not only incorporate an effluent treatment plant within their premises but also has. It is expected to increase the demands for centralized as well as stand-alone effluent treatment plants for the industrial cluster”.
SepraTECH Solutions provides a varied product offering for process applications, water & wastewater treatment including design/build of packaged plants, as well as design, engineering & project management of turnkey solutions. Harnessing decades of experience in process applications, water & wastewater treatment, SepraTECH Solutions is dedicated to delivering sound engineering solutions to clients while minimizing over-all project costs and surpassing extreme quality expectations.
Comprehensive Approach towards Problems
The wastewater treatment market is flooded with key players; however, SepraTECH stays ahead of the curve with its unique approach toward problems. The company’s ability to study a particular process stream or an effluent stream to check whether some resources can be recovered by incorporating a specific recovery system, sets the benchmark.
A good chunk of time during the development of the recovery system is spent on research, conducting per-mutations & combinations with respect to process stream, investing time on pilot trials, and then finally commercializing it based on the results and proving the ROI. Once it is commercialized, negligible amount of time is spent in identifying the potential customers and setting up the treatment and recovery system for them.
SepraTECH has a profound inclination to solving clients’ problems end-to-end via a comprehensive approach. Most of the wastewater treatment companies' current treatment objective for treating wastewater is to produce an accept-able quality of water for reuse or discharge it at the lowest life cycle cost. Most of the existing companies only focus on removing the impurities present in effluent while overlooking to capitalize on these resources inherent in wastewater. SepraTECH helps its prospective clients recover useful re-sources from ending up in wastewater.
For a resource-rich effluent/process stream SepraTECH team conduct a three-step process to establish confidence in the client.
Step 1
Involves collecting samples from the client and conducting lab-scale tests to study the stream parameters in detail.
Step 2
Leveraging its extensive range of pilot plants, SepraTECH conducts pilot trials for the process stream and thereafter compiles and analyzes the results.
Step 3
Finally, the system is commercialized as a feasible and economical solution.
Given the aforementioned steps, SepraTECH easily earns end user’s patronage. Most businesses think only supply and where a company sits in its industry ecosystem is important. Contrary to popular belief, what matters most, is its relative ‘share of customer value’ in the final product or solution, and the cost of producing that value. “We take most of the money that we could have spent on paid
advertising and instead put it back into the customer experience. Then we let the customers be our marketing,” says Nithin Jose, Head – Process Technologies, SepraTECH.
SepraTECH also carries expertise in recovering value/product from waste streams of industries.
For an instance, SepraTECH is able to recover crystal clear caustic from mercerizing effluent of textile industries which can be reused, thereby reducing operational costs. Similarly, the firm can recover caustic from CIP effluents of Food and Beverage industries, generate energy by incinerating biological sludge of municipal sewage treatment plants, initiate production of anhydrous sodium sulphate (purity 99%) from sodium sulphate rich waste stream, clarify & concentrate juices etc and many other such process applications to reclaim valuable products for various industries.
Innovation at the Core- Pioneering Membrane Tech
Ever since its inception, all of SepraTECH’s capabilities and practices are aligned with 3 ‘R’s viz. Reduce, Recycle and Reuse. SepraTECH is constantly focusing on membrane process applications on recovering resources from effluent streams with the help of membranes. Some of its major triumphs that included recovering resources are as follows:
a. Established itself as the only manufacture for sulphate removal membrane systems in India by supplying 6 sulphate removal membrane systems to recover An-hydrous sodium sulphate of more than 99% purity from the effluent stream
b. Supplied Spent Acid Recovery Membrane System (2018)
c. Supplied Membrane-based effluent recycle system for handling low pH acid stream from Electroplating Industry(2018)
d. Supply of sewage treatment plant and biological sludge dewatering system for Asia’s 1st one of a kind project funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for generating energy from biological sewage sludge (2019)
Sepratech is constantly focusing on membrane process applications on recovering resources from effluent streams with the help of membranes
Along with Primary and Secondary Treatment Systems associated with the chemical and biological treatment of wastewater, SepraTECH has treated wastewater recovery systems that involve filtration and membrane systems like Ultrafiltration Membrane System and Reverse Osmosis Membrane System which can further treat the water making it fit for utility reuse in industries. The firm also provides Zero Liquid Discharge Systems wherein every single drop of effluent being discharged from industry is reused by incorporating our systems and the only product that would be discharged is in the form of solids which can be then sent to landfill sites for proper disposal.
Modular and mobile industrial wastewater treatment market is also a part of SepraTECH’s targeted offering areas. This ability to rapidly add and reduce capacity over the lifetime of a customer's project, as well as to change plant configurations in line with a customer's operational changes or the chemistry of the wastewater, eliminates redundancy and ultimately, lowers project expansion costs.
Testimonies to SepraTECH’s Expertise
The plethora of triumphs and achievements goes incomplete without mentioning SepraTECH’s success stories.
The company recently executed a project for the Indian Railways, by supplying SepraTECH’s Water Treatment System and Effluent Treatment System for the Automatic Coach Washing Plant (ACWP) which is installed at Vadodara Railway Station. Usually, it took the manpower of 24 people who use 1200 litres of water to wash one train, whereas, SepraTECH’s ACW plant uses only 250 litres of water to execute the same. The Industrial RO System sup-plied by SepraTECH will provide excellent quality water for train-coach washing. The wash water effluent generated will be treated through SepraTECH’s effluent treatment system and recycled back instead of discharging it, forming an almost closed-loop water matrix, in turn reducing freshwater consumption.
This process will be replicated in more than 20 different sites of the Indian Railways all over India. In another highly fruitful project for the textile industry, SepraTECH developed a selective sulphate rejecting membrane which can help in concentrating and recovering sulphate salts, and with the help of the downstream patented crystallisation process, can recover anhydrous sodium sulphate for reuse. This can help in reducing the overall Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) of the effluent stream and also reduce the operational costs spent in procuring salts required for the process.
Harbinger of Wastewater Treatment tech
SepraTECH Solutions is spearheaded under the leadership of Mr. V. Y. Jose (Founder and Managing Director). Mr. V. Y. Jose is a Post Graduate in Applied Chemistry from Maharaja Sayajirao (MS) University in Vadodara. The industry veteran is in the field of water and wastewater treatment since 1984. Leveraging his rich experience of more than37 years in the field of membrane manufacturing and membrane process separations, Mr. V.Y Jose is a pioneer of the same. Throughout his professional life, he has been associated with state-of-the-art Membrane Technology which itself is a sustainable technology as it uses fewer chemicals and energy compared to conventional technologies.
Mr. Nikhil Jose is leading the projects and production department as Head – Projects. Each system dis-patched from SepraTECH’s works is de-signed and engineered under his guidance. He had completed his Mechanical Engineering from VIT University and was a part of an MNC in Bangalore, as Business Analyst, before joining SepraTECH. Mr. Nithin Jose had completed his Chemical Engineering from SRM University and obtained his post-graduation in Water and Wastewater Engineering from Cranfield University. At present, he is the Head – Process Technologies and handles Sales and Marketing as well as new product development for SepraTECH.
Going Global is the Future
Established in 2013, SepraTECH had a rather humble beginning, with having bagged 90 projects in the initial 5 years. However, catching pace and building reputation, the company secured the same number of projects in the last two years. “We have achieved a Year on Year growth ranging between 10-15 percent in the last two years and targeting to achieve even an higher increase in turnover for FY 2020-2021 in comparison to FY 2019-2020 even though COVID lockdown had an impact on our production for three months. In the international market, we have executed projects in Bangladesh, West Africa, Gulf, and even North America”, informs Nikhil Jose, Head of Project.
In the near future, SepraTECH is planning to expand its clientele mainly concerning to membrane process applications and is aiming to establish itself as an international reliable brand name targeting specific industrial sectors. At the same time, focus will be to invest in the right workforce and associate with channel partners to expand SepraTECH product and service port-folio in the international market.
