Demineralized (dm) water has gained huge importance in various industries including preparation of ultrapure water for saline and dialysis fluids in hospitals, laboratory for culture preparation, microelectronics, radiators and batteries of automobiles, semiconductor and pharmaceutical product manufacturing, fire extinguishers and cosmetic industry. the production of dm water using conventional processes such as multi-stage flash evaporation or distillation processes is energy intensive due to involvement of phase change. the other disadvantages of process include complex design, requirement of high energy and capital costs, usage of large quantity of chemicals for preventing scale formation etc. therefore dm production by a cost effective method is highly desirable. chronic kidney disease has found to be a worldwide health issue. millions of population is dying each year all over the world as they do not have access to affordable treatment such as renal replacement therapy. the other option for treatment of kidney failure is hemodialysis which uses a dialysis machine to purify blood outside the body. it works as an artificial kidney where the unfiltered blood from human body travels through dialysis hollow fiber membranes to remove waste, extra chemicals and fluid. therefore to overcome the above described problems, membrane separations group of iict has designed highly efficient and inexpensive membrane equipment for production of demineralized water and hollow fibers for hemodialysis application. dm water production unit consist of compact cascaded membrane system wherein the raw water is initially pumped through a prefilter assembly (activated carbon/micron cartridge) for removing suspended removing colloid particles, suspended solids, color and odor, and a series of two membrane modules placed in parallel for removing total dissolved solids, heavy metal ions, fluoride, turbidity and pathogens. the permeate obtained thus is again automatically introduced as feed to another series of membranes placed in parallel to generate a final permeate of 0−2 ppm total dissolved solids (tds) which is further treated by uv system for removing any residual bacteria and virus. the process developed is more economical and effective compared to highly expensive membrane units supplied by multinational companies including millipore (milliq) or sartorius. the system can produce 40 – 60 l/h capacity dm water at a low operating cost of 5 paise per liter only. due to larger membrane area per unit volume of hollow-fiber configuration has gained worldwide importance as it has been widely used in ultrafiltration for surface water purification and dialysis/hemodialysis application for blood purification. our group has designed and developed indigenous low cost spinneret with single bore configuration which is unique in preparation of the hollow fibers required for both water purification and dialysis applications. the spinneret has a provision to alter the diameter of fiber using an inbuilt detachable needle arrangement. this spinneret allows the manufacture of hollow fibers having different sizes ranging from 150 microns to 900 microns outer diameter and 110 microns to 800 microns inner diameter. this innovation has high commercial value in terms of replacement of imported dialysis membrane modules. this project is aimed to serve the poor people of india suffering from kidney disease at low cost.
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