Pilot Project on Wastewater Management
KPCSD supported a pilot project, led by Prof Sudhir Arora, Professor of Practice, Civil Engineering, for management of sewage and greywater in rural and peri-urban areas. It proposes a new concept of spiral sewer to overcome high water requirements and steep slopes in gravity sewers. The project follows a holistic approach including innovations such as use of modified traditional and locally available water-wheel for aeration to create aerobic conditions and use of plastic waste as fillers in HDPE balls to mitigate nuisance of plastic bottles and polythene bags.
KPCSD COVID-19 Research Awards
- Sharma, Anupam Joya and Subramanyam, Malavika A., “Psychological impact of Covid-19 lockdown in India: different strokes for different folks”, medRXiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, DOI: medRxiv:10.1101/2020.05.25.20111716, May 2020
- Gopal, Anvita; Sharma, Anupam Joya and Subramanyam, Malavika A., “Dynamics of psychological responses to Covid-19 in India: a longitudinal study”, medRXiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, DOI: medRxiv:10.1101/2020.06.12.20129791, Jun 2020
- Kumar, Manish; Taki, Kaling; Gahlot, Rohit; Sharma, Ayushi and Dhangar, Kiran, “A chronicle of SARS-CoV-2: Part-I – epidemiology, diagnosis, prognosis, transmission and treatment”, Science of The Total Environment, DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139278, vol. 734, Sep 2020
- Kumar, Manish and Patel, Arbind Kumar et al., “First proof of the capability of wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 in India through detection of genetic material of SARS-CoV-2”, Science of The Total Environment, DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141326, vol. 746, Dec 2020
KPCSD sponsored projects
- Golden Plastic
KPCSD provided a seed grant to Prof Amit Arora and Prof Madhu Vadali for the project “Golden Plastic – Turning plastic waste into local businesses through 3D printing.” The seed funding supports preliminary work for a larger project titled “Golden Plastic” submitted to the DST Indo-Portugal Bilateral joint call collaborating with Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Portugal. The grant will support preliminary feasibility studies and proof-of-concept prototypes at IITGN. It will be utilised for equipment and hardware, such as FDM printer, extruder, shredder, components for controlled heating, temperature and pressure sensors, and other mechatronic components for design evaluation and proof-of-concept.
- Weekly Surveillance of Wastewater for SARSCoV-2 Gene Detection in Gandhinagar for Pandemic Curve Monitoring
The Centre funded a project related to COVID-19: “Weekly Surveillance of Wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 Gene Detection in Gandhinagar for Pandemic Curve Monitoring.” The project, led by Prof Manish Kumar of Earth Sciences, aimed to detect and quantify variation in the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewaters of Gandhinagar to understand the pandemic, to maintain the weekly resolution of the data for three months in genetic material loadings in the wastewater treatment plant at different stages and period, to establish the applicability of Wastewater Based Epidemiology (WBE) for COVID-19 surveillance as a potential tool for public health monitoring at the community level and to understand the pathogen diversity (viral and bacterial) from wastewater to establish early signs of WBE as a prediction tool.