Plappally, Anand K

Unplanned urbanization and industrialization have become threats to the sustainability of services in the cities of India. This article explores the relationship between land use spatial pattern, vegetation cover, water, and varying configurations of industrial land use in Kota City, Rajasthan, India, from the year 1990 to 2020. The study utilizes remote sensed Landsat data for analyzing the spatial-temporal dynamics of the landscape. A supervised classification approach is adopted to classify three decadal data. Spatial metrics are utilized to quantify the spatial configuration of the landscape. It was observed that a significant urban expansion has occurred in the city mainly in the northwestern direction on fertile lands, with a severe loss of traditional water bodies within the city. Lately, the rocky southern landscape of Kota city has been used for performing agriculture.

This paper elaborates manufacture and performance analysis of new clay ceramic (CC) water filtration materials. The CC is manufactured from clay and sawdust mix. Waste marble powder and machined iron fines are used as additives to the mix for manufacturing the new modified materials. An equal volume of clay and sawdust were used to manufacture the control CC. Another ceramic, marble clay ceramic (MCC), was manufactured with distinct volume fractions of clay, sawdust, and marble (40:40:10). Third ceramic, ferrous clay ceramic (FCC), was manufactured from an equal volume of clay and sawdust and five percent by volume of iron fines. FCC showcased better arsenic (As (V)) contaminant removal from water at acidic pH while MCC showcased best As (V) removal at around pH of 8. Average flexural strength of MCC was comparatively better than FCC and CC. The modified materials showcased similar percolation rates at par with control CC. MCC showcased comparatively better E. coli removal capabilities than FCC and CC. Only limited volumetric addition of marble powder and iron fines were found to positively affect compressive strength. The results demonstrate new low-cost ways of modifying strength and specific water treatment characteristics of CC using waste materials from local marble-processing and iron-machining industries.

The experimental farmland-channel-wetland systems (FCWS) in Guilin, China have been recently designed based on wetland water recycling systems in Midwest USA. The present article develops a methodology for simplifying the prediction of residence time as a function of the flow rate and physical shape of these contaminant removal systems. A series of two-dimensional simulation studies on surface flow through FCWS wetland of different shapes are performed. Parameters influencing hydraulic characteristics such as empirical values of inlet and outlet flow conditions, and wetland shapes are utilized as inputs to the study. Roughness coefficient was assumed to be constant across the different wetland designs discussed in this article. The mean velocity values within the wetland decreases with increase in ratio of variant inlet widths and wetland inflow rates. The results from the simulation are used as inputs for performing a multivariate multiparameter regression algorithm. This framework models the residence time within the wetland independently as a function of shape, mass inflow, and inlet geometry. This simplified model can be used with ease to evaluate existing as well as new wetland system designs for potential improvement in its function of desalting and filtering waters. © 2013 Desalination Publications. All rights reserved.

This paper presents the results of an experimental study of the effects of porosity on the flow rate and Escherichia coli (E. coli) filtration characteristics of porous ceramic water filters (CWFs) prepared without a coating of silver. Clay-based CWFs were fabricated by sintering composites of redart clay and fine woodchips (sawdust) in three different proportions by volume, viz: 50:50, 65:35, and 75:25. Sintering the greenware below 1,000 C produced reddish colored pot of three different degrees of porosity and micro-and nanoscale pores, which are the key to efficient filtration. The porosities and pore size distribution frequencies of the sintered clay ceramics were characterized using mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP). The porosity of the CWFs ranged from ∼36% to ∼47% and increased with increasing sawdust content in a linear fashion, and the pore size varied from ∼10 nm to ∼100 μm. The volume flow rates of water through the CWFs were investigated by measuring the cumulative amount of water flow as a function of time. The flow rate was found to increase with increasing porosity of the CWFs. The effective intrinsic permeabilities of the CWFs were then obtained from Darcy fits to the flow rate data. These were compared with values obtained using the Katz-Thompson method. Both approaches gave comparable results of permeability between ∼1 millidarcy to ∼50 millidarcy. The tortuosity of the CWFs was found from Hager's equation to range from ∼10 to ∼60. In general, while the permeability of the CWFs decreased with increasing clay content, tortuosity increased with increasing clay content. The CWFs removed E. coli from aqueous suspension very efficiently with average log reduction values between 5.7-6.4. The implications and limitations of the results are discussed for the effective filtration of water in the developing world. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Off-white water pots have had sustained traditional acceptance for a long period of time in Jodhpur compared to red colored water pots imported from the neighboring Gujarat state. Both types of pots hold 20 liters of potable water. The fluorescence spectroscopy reveals dominance of silica, alumina and iron oxide in red pots from Gujarat whereas off-white pots from Rajasthan also have a slight excess of CaO and MgO. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy reveals a firing temperature of 800 °C for off-white pots, which is comparatively less than that for red pots. A lower amount of Fe2O3 and higher MgO in off-white compared to red water pots is responsible for the color differentiation. Off-white pots show a better degree of cooling compared to red pots. Better resistance to load was observed in off-white pots compared to red pots. This study may imply influence of hidden techno-functional aspects towards sustainability of off-white pots in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.

Today, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is ubiquitous. It has touched almost all spheres concerning human survival, growth and development. Agriculture is no exception to it. This paper presents the research initiatives towards improving irrigation efficiency through affordable ICT solutions. It presents experimental results of studies related to improving irrigation efficiency in Semi arid zones in India, using commercially available ICT solutions. It compares between simple microirrigation and microirrigation with ICT (irrigation on demand) and establishes that by using ICT in agriculture, we can increase the irrigation efficiencies by a considerable amount. The paper also presents the development of indigenous wireless sensor node and gateway made from open source hardware and software components. The efforts in this regard show, while maintaining comparable performance, a significant reduction in the cost of wireless sensor devices, when compared to commercially available wireless sensor devices, is achieved.

The current study involves a simple hydrazine based colorimetric chemo-sensor for selective determination of various anions. The anion-binding ability of the ligand with various anions via polar-non polar interactions and hydrogen bonding has been examined. The sensor displayed significant UV-vis enhancement response to anions such as fluoride, acetate, hydroxide, cyanide and hydrogen sulphate, with respect to concentration and time. The rate constants (K) and binding constants, Ka, for these anions have been measured by using Benesi-Hildebrand equation. A time dependent NMR study revealed stronger interaction for cyanide and fluoride ions among competing anions.

Traditionally, High Dynamic Range (HDR) images are created by combining photographs taken at different exposure times. This technique has the overhead to capture more than single image of the scene while changing the exposure value. The proposed approach, InternetHDR, aims at creating an HDR image without the need of explicitly taking differently exposed images. This novel approach uses a single Low Dynamic Range (LDR) image as input to create an HDR image by combining information from visually similar images mined from the internet sites using Google image search. The results show that visually pleasing HDR images can be created using a single LDR image and additional information from the visually similar images mined from the internet. © 2014 IEEE.

The article elaborates the development of gravity-based water filtration systems capable of removing fluoride using natural organic material. In this study, the precipitation and dissolution reaction occurring in suspension of hydroxyapatite (HAP) as addition of fluoride were investigated under well-defined condition. This process is set to occur in a quasi-static gravity-based water filter system. This system is a (pond sand, organic material (gaur seed powder, neem, sesame sawdust, and Ayurvedic waste), water, and HAP mixture) composite ceramic. This article illustrates these ceramic material systems manufactured using distinct permutations of pond sand and organic materials. HAP is introduced into the composite mix of pond sand and organic materials to manufacture some of the sintered ceramic filtration material systems tested here. The fluoride removal efficiency of these variant systems is discussed. The energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy studies of the ceramics provided the mineral content within the system variants. At high temperatures beyond 600°C, the sintered hydroxyapatite is observed to have a microstructural transformation from amorphous to crystalline. The surface properties of these sintered as well as raw materials used in the production of the ceramic composite are also investigated. A mathematical multivariate regression model is derived providing a relationship between the effectiveness of the water filtration systems as a function of the raw material composition and properties. The Ayurvedic waste material was found to be a good substitute for HAP for fluoride removal. The proposed treatment system is appropriate and suitable approach for fluoride removal in rural areas, because of its simplicity and easy operation and handling. Since Ayurvedic and organic waste materials are easily available at low cost, the proposed method is very suitable for the people living in low-income rural areas of developing countries like India.

Abstract: Column reactor models of volume size 3,000  and 1,500 cm3 are made using organic materials such as sawdust and immature (drumstick) Moringa oleifera and other natural materials such as gravels (6 mm size) and ball clay available locally at Jodhpur, India. Water is passed through these porous reactors under gravity at once. The experiments were aimed at finding low-cost solutions for wastewater or sewage disposal at point of use. The change in pH during water filtration experiments is measured and modelled as functions of X1 (column height), X2 (flow rate), X3 (cumulative percolation time) and X4 (change in electrical conductivity). The parameters X1, X2, X3 and X4 are found to be highly correlated to each other irrespective of materials used for making the bioreactors. There is a hyperbolic relationship between temperature gradient within the porous material column bed through which water is percolating and time taken during that process. The temperature distribution in the gravel or sawdust media reactors is not influenced by the inflow rate or height of the reactor column used for experimentation. Distinct temperature distribution exists at each depth of the heterogeneous reactors. The multi-parameter model developed and the hyperbolic relationships help to characterize the efficacy of bioreactors. The effect of the materials on the wastewater treatment can now be individually evaluated using the multi-parameter approach presented in this paper.