Water treatment goes undergroynd

Bhaskar Sen Gupta worked in a project to develop an innovative subterranean arsenic removal (SAR) method to remove arsenic from groundwater in rural Indian communities. The Treatment of groundwater for Irrigation and POTable (TIPOT) project led by engineers at Queen's University Belfast (QUB) successfully developed the novel SAR method to remove arsenic from groundwater in a village near Calcutta. The TIPOT process involved changing reduced groundwater in the aquifer to an oxidized state by periodically charging aerated water. This transformed the microbial flora in the aquifer into a rich body of iron-, manganese- and arsenic-oxidizing bacteria that enzymatically removed arsenic along with iron and manganese. Ordinary plastic shower heads were used to increase the DO level in water up to 6 mg/l by spraying it in a plastic tank before returning it to the aquifer in a predefined operating sequence consisting of delivery, intermission and infiltration.