Water minister Satyendar Jain announced on Tuesday that the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) is building a 200 tonnes per day sludge treatment plant at its Kondli sewage treatment plant (STP), and that all STPs in Delhi will have their sludge treatment facility within the next two years.
According to Jain, the DJB's 36 STPs produce about 700-800 tonne of sludge residue per day, which will be treated using modern technology in sewage treatment plants. Sludge management has become a major issue in the city, according to a senior DJB official. The official said that sewage sludge is a solid or slurry residue that forms as a by-product of sewage treatment plants. This sludge is transferred to tanks where anaerobic bacteria decompose it to produce biogas, which can be used to generate electricity at a low cost. The residue sludge is then dumped into the sludge dump yards maintained by the DJB or municipal corporations. But it ends up fouling the area. The sludge treatment plant being built in Kondli, east Delhi, is intended to address this issue. According to the official, it will be built on the grounds of the existing Kondli facility, which already has four STPs. The water minister said that only 5% of the sludge will be leftover once the sludge treatment plant is operational. Even the leftovers will be used to make tiles and to improve the soil's condition. According to Jain, the project will have a 15-year operation and maintenance (O&M) period. The facility will be operational by March 31, 2022, and the model can be replicated at all 36 STPs currently in operation, according to Jain. Image Source
