Zero Liquid Discharge lab inaugurated at IITM

Chennai: Mr. N. Sankar, Chairman, The Sanmar Group, declared open the “Chemplast Sanmar ZLD Research Laboratory” in IIT-Madras today. Coinciding with its 50 year celebrations, Chemplast Sanmar, the flagship company of the Sanmar Group, has set up a state of the art Research Laboratory at an outlay of Rs.1 crore, in the Department of Environment Engineering, to carry out research on Zero Liquid Discharge(ZLD), in close collaboration with user industries. The Laboratory will provide necessary test bed facilities for evaluating various new / modified technologies related to ZLD development for target industries.
On the occasion, Mr. Sankar remarked that he was happy that Chemplast Sanmar with the support and guidance of IIT-Madras, has set up the Laboratory, a facility that has been needed for quite some time for carrying out R&D in this field. Zero Liquid Discharge as a concept was formulated by him almost 10 years ago and all the chemical businesses of the Sanmar Group follow the principle of ZLD in letter and spirit. ZLD has now become a precondition that is being followed by all the Pollution Control Boards and is considered as an important environment control methodology.
“Chemplast Sanmar is a pioneer in adopting ZLD and which has now become an industry standard. We adopted ZLD in our plants at Cuddalore and Mettur in Tamil Nadu and Karaikal in Puducherry, thereby ensuring no treated effluent from the plant operations was discharged onto the land or sea. These plants completely recycle and reuse liquid effluents,” said N Sankar at the inauguration.
Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director IIT-Madras observed that Chemplast Sanmar ZLD Research Laboratory will work with IIT’s Centre for Urbanization, Building and Environment (CUBE) to undertake pilot scale trials of the innovative technologies at industrial sites also. He further said that it is expected that several faculty members from different departments of IIT such as, Civil Engineering, Chemicals, Electrical, Materials and Biotechnology will collaborate with the Environment Engineering group for pursuing the R&D in the Chemplast Sanmar ZLD Research Laboratory.