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JSW Steel is a part of the O.P. Jindal Group with revenues of US$ 3.7 billion from diversified interests in steel, energy, minerals and mining, infrastructure & logistics, cement & IT.

Ion Exchange India has been managing the water systems at JSW’s integrated steel plant at Toranagallu since 2005. Based on the excellent performance of our team in effectively and efficiently managing the complete water systems for the steel complex, JSW Steel has awarded a series of contracts for various water and waste water treatment plants for their various projects - blast furnace, CRM, coke oven etc.

As part of plans to expand capacity to 7 MTPA and thereafter to 10 MTPA, JSW is installing a 1.6 MTPA Long Product Mill to manufacture bar and wire rods. This mill like all other steel mills needed a complete water cooling and conveyance system comprising cooling towers, pumps, blowers, filters etc. – requirements that our subsidiary Ion Exchange Infrastructure is eminently suitable to handle, given their experience and capability in construction of large projects. Ion Exchange Infrastructure with the help of their steel specialist designed a water system package which JSW Steel, based on their comfort level with the system designed and our proven past performance, awarded to Ion Exchange Infrastructure, against competition from the existing supplier NICCO. Awarded in July 2007, the project status is in line with the schedule based on the infrastructure and readiness of the site.

1. Indirect cooling water systems of the reheating furnaces
2. Indirect cooling water systems of Bar Rod Mill and Wire Rod Mill
3. Direct cooling water systems of Bar Rod Mill and Wire Rod Mill.

Each of these water systems incorporates complete pumping systems, piping, cooling towers and side stream filters for cooling towers, and also incorporates all related instrumentation, automation, electricals etc. Additionally, the direct cooling water system incorporates a series of vertical high rate pressure filters for mill scale filtration. The contract includes the complete design of the civil structures for the complex along with sizing of critical process civil structures like the scale pit etc.

Subsequently, we have been awarded the turnkey contract along with ten year O&M of the waste water recycling system at JSW Steel.

General Motors India Pvt. Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors Corp. (GM), the world's largest auto maker headquartered in Detroit, USA with over 130 car and truck manufacturing facilities spread over 33 countries. The annual global industry sales leader for 76 years, GMC today employs about 284,000 people around the world, with global sales of US $180 billion. In 2006, 9.1 million GM cars and trucks were sold globally under the following brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, HUMMER, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn and Vauxhall.

GM has one plant in India, in Halol, Gujarat, and the second project at Talegaon was planned considering the huge growing market for automobiles in India.

GM, through their worldwide facilities group, were scouting for an organization to undertake the complete utility complex for the Talegaon car plant, on a design and build-own-operate (BOO) basis. Ion Exchange Infrastructure, with its project management expertise and extensive domain knowledge in water and waste water treatment as well as in piping, electricals, instrumentation etc., instilled in GM confidence in their capability to construct the entire central utility complex. Working closely with the customer and various package suppliers, the complete utility package was designed and offered to General Motors.

After review and discussions with the worldwide facilities group and the General Motors India project team, the contract was awarded to Ion Exchange Infrastructure for the turnkey design, engineering, procurement and construction of the central utility complex. Following its commissioning, the Ion Exchange team has moved in to operate and maintain the complex for General Motors India.

The central utility complex produces and delivers all the required utilities like compressed air, potable water, process water, hot water, etc. to the paint shop. The waste water from the car plant is collected at the central utility complex, treated in the waste water treatment plant and delivered to the site sanitary sewer.

The various systems constructed by us include:

1. Raw water treatment to treat MIDC supplied fresh water.
2. Process water treatment to produce demineralised water for the paint shop.
3. Potable water treatment for drinking water for the plant.
4. Waste water treatment plant to treat waste water from various shops within the car plant including oily waste water from phosphate stages, the ELPO waste water and general waste water.
5. Compressor to generate compressed air at required flow and pressure for the complete car plant.
6. Hot water generator along with chimney and other accessories to deliver hot water at required temperature for the paint shop.
7. Welder water treatment and cooling package for the body shop.
8. DG set for power backup.
9. LPG storage yard with bullets and necessary safety infrastructure.
10. Fire fighting systems

The water treatment plant and all accessories are designed and supplied by Ion Exchange India and the 600 m3/day effluent treatment plant and all accessories by our joint venture Ion Exchange Waterleau Ltd. On-site and classroom training covering process, technological, operation and maintenance aspects of the plant were imparted to the client’s personnel. All the systems were integrated into the central utility complex building which also houses the laboratory, office complexes etc. The systems provided are fully automatic with state-of-art instrumentation and automation. The complete electrical work, piping, pipe racks, storage tanks, building construction were undertaken by Ion Exchange Infrastructure.

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Urban Infrastructure Project at Rampur .
Project for laying 54 kms of deep sewer network for Zone II of Rampur City, Uttar Pradesh, for the Regional Centre of Science and Environment.

Ion Exchange Infrastructure was awarded the contract for laying 54 kms of deep sewer network for Zone II of Rampur, by The Regional Centre of Science and Environment. Tetratech India, subsidiary of US MNC Tetratech were the project monitoring consultants for this contract. The work involved laying a sewer network of RCC piping ranging from 150 mm to 1000 mm dia. in very narrow streches of the city at depths extending from 1.5 to 8 m.

Since some of the streches were so very narrow that normal excavation was not possible, Ion Exchange also carried out approx. 1 km of sewer network using trenchless technology. Laying around 700 m of sewer piping in a day at peak work progress, the complete network of 54 km was finished within 9 months including the monsoon period.

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Water at the Heart of Hospitality
The average per capita water consumption in a typical five star hotel is 1500 litres/guest room/day; assuming a 50 room hotel, the requirement would be 75,000 litres/day. Continuous availability of good quality water in large quantity is therefore essential, and, with Increasing scarcity of water, its deteriorating quality and high costs posing problems for the hospitality industry, good water management becomes critical.

IEI is a preferred vendor for the Taj Group for more than two decades, supplying central drinking water systems, sewage treatment plants, cooling water treatment, softeners for boiler water.....IEI News met Mr. K. D. Deodhar, Director - Engineering Services, The Indian Hotels Company Ltd., to learn more about the Taj Group's philosophy, views, preferences and on water management.

How does the Taj Group typically meet such large requirements of water ? How do the hotels ensure quality standards are met?
When a new hotel is planned, a feasibility study determines sources, quality and quantity of water supplies. Influent water - which could be municipal, tanker or borewell water, is analysed to determine treatment - whether filtration, softening, reverse osmosis, organic scavenger or a combination of these. Each region has its own contaminants - down south there is generally more dissolved iron and excess oxygen; in Andhra Pradesh one finds mica content whereas up north, particularly in the hilly areas , water contains a lot of organic matter.

When it comes to water treatment, what does the Group look for in a vendor?
Reliability of product and process, and continuous consistent performance is the topmost priority - in other words, full-proof and fail-safe is what we expect. Robust, user friendly technology and equipment are very important. And we look for very good technical guidance as well as prompt after sales service.

What has been the Taj experience with the performance of systems supplied by IEI?
I think Ion Exchange India fulfills all the conditions I have mentioned. You are considered the experts in your field - a solution provider with a solid technological base and experienced technocrats. . When one has a serious medical problem, one seeks out a reputed specialist; well, when you have a need for water management, you go to the proven expert. So when companies are confronted with a challenging problem, they approach IEI. This has also been the Taj experience. One is assured that IEI will undertake a proper study and extend its full professional support - examples I can cite are reverse osmosis treatment at Taj Bengal in Kolkata and the organic scavenger resin which solved our problem at Annapurna in Nepal.

That's certainly music to our ears! Do you have any suggestions on how we could enhance the support we give to our customers?
Any product, however good, can be proven bad, if it is not used , operated or maintained properly. You can give someone a Mercedes, but if he cannot drive it properly, he will say the car is bad! So one way to further help clients gain optimum performance from their treatment plants is to undertake site visits to conduct a technical survey or technical audit to ensure equipment is being used the way it should be. During site audits, one will come across many ways, small and big, where a technical suggestion on correct usage or dosage may result in a much more effective plant performance or save the client an enormous amount of money....such soft service which ultimately helps the customer optimise his process, will definitely help the vendor gain a cutting edge over competition. It may be a simple procedure, nothing complicated or requiring innovation, nevertheless periodical visits to observe the operational technicalities will help the client gain optimum performance from his investment and would be very much appreciated.

We at IEI do believe in backing solutions with total service support. Outsourcing service, particularly O&M, is helping many of our customers to eliminate hassles of supervision and time on water treatment and to concentrate on their core business....perhaps the Taj Group would find O&M very useful too.
Well, as you know, in case of hotels, hydraulics is only one part - perhaps 15-18%,of the utilities; since in any case we need to maintain an in-house engineering department to handle the many other utilities, it makes more economic sense to do the O&M ourselves.

What prompted the Taj Group to go in for sewage treatment? How much water is typically recycled by a Taj hotel?
Most of our hotels have sewage treatment plants; wherever we have large lawns we use the treated water for gardening; or it is used for the cooling towers, after further treatment. We also use the treated water for the low end use of toilet flushing in staff areas. First and foremost, it was shortage of water that made us go in for sewage treatment plants. This also helps to reduce the requirement of tanker supplies and thus, the cost of water. While discharge regulations have been introduced for the hotel industry, as far as the Taj Group is concerned, we have been observing these much before their introduction. It's the Tata philosophy - don't wait for regulations to give a disciplinary dose; discipline yourself proactively before regulations come. So we went in for sewage treatment way back in 1986-87 ....at our locations at Agra, Jaipur, Delhi and Lucknow, much before regulations.

Typically if a hotel consumes 'X' quantity of water, about 20% goes to the cooling towers, and the rest of the water ultimately goes to the drain. Out of that, recoverable water is about 50 - 55% which can be used for cooling towers and toilet flushing.

What are some of the other green initiatives that the Taj Group has adopted?
We strongly believe that natural resources must be preserved. Therefore, when it comes to green practices - whether relating to water, fuel or paper, or any other, we believe we should lead by example.

Take air conditioning - we go for higher efficiency machines whereby power is saved. We use machines having superheaters - so we are able to generate hot water free of cost directly from the compressor. Even a saving of just 10% water translates into a huge quantity; a hotel using 200 to 250 kilo litres/day will save 25 kilo litres /day or 9,125 kilo litres in one year!. There is a huge saving of quantity of water used for cooling towers; additionally we will not be using fossil fuel to generate hot water and thus will be conserving a lot of energy. Finally, we will not be polluting the air . Just one example of all round environmental protection and preservation.

Several of our apartment hotels - Wellington Mews in Mumbai and in Goa and Ernakulam do not have boilers installed and generate hot water from superheaters.

At several of our hotels, kitchen, housekeeping and other degradable waste such as grass is converted into methane based bio-gas - examples are Rambagh Palace and the Jai Mahal Palace in Jaipur . At several hotels, kitchen waste is also used for vermiculture and manure for the lawns.

Any environmental awards and certifications?
80 - 90% of our hotels are covered by the HACCP criteria on kitchen hygiene and food measures. Almost 50% of our hotels are ISO 14000 certified and several of our hotels are ISO 18000 certified. All new hotels will be covered by ISO 14000 & 18000 simultaneously.

How will the impending scarcity of natural resources, whether water scarcity or the energy crunch - affect the hospitality industry? What in your view is the way ahead?
Every corporate has a social and environmental responsibility and will have to learn to manage resources much better for a sustainable future. Companies will need to transform their processes to reduce the burden on the environment. When it comes to water, on the one hand low flow fittings, rain water harvesting and water recycle will help conserve this resource; but innovative devices and new technologies will also be needed to help reduce the use of water. Preferred vendors of the future will definitely be those who are forward looking and willing to work in proactive partnership with customers on improvements in technology and processes that will benefit both the customer's business and the environment.

Making Waves with Nicco
Effective water management is critical to a water park, much more so to India’s largest artificial sea beach launched by Nicco Parks and Resorts Ltd. at Kolkata.

Says Mr. Rajeev Kaul, Chairman, Nicco Group, “Nicco Parks is determined to maintain water purity levels of the highest international norms at our theme park. To achieve this, we have an exclusive arrangement with the best provider of total water treatment services - Ion Exchange Services Limited. Not only is the water in our park purified continuously, it is tested twice a day by their trained water specialists, and the results certified and displayed for everyone to see.”

These are the high expectations that Ion Exchange Services Ltd. (IESL) is fulfilling daily, to Nicco’s complete satisfaction at the extremely popular “Wet-O-Wild Beach Tropicana”.

IESL's association with Nicco Group spans supply, installation, erection & commissioning to total water management services for the entire systems required for complete filling of water in the pools, for make-up water due to evaporation loss, backwash water supply, and for the recirculation filter. This includes an ø850 mm oxidation chamber, ø 1800 mm sand filter and softener and dealkaliser. The plant recirculates a huge 3600 cu.m water in different pools in two hours, to maintain turbidity at the desirable level of 5 NTU. It took a month and a team of four from IESL, skilled in fabrication, installation, erection and commissioning, with good operational knowledge of water treatment equipment, to ensure that all water treatment was in well place for the opening of the park.

IESL’s service team of six, experienced in operation and maintenance of water treatment systems, pipelines, chemical dosage etc., is stationed full time at the park to ensure desired water quality is maintained at all times. At the full fledged lab set up at site by IESL, water quality is analysed twice a day, before the park opens and again, around mid-day, and the results prominently displayed.

This total water management approach by IESL assures the customer not only of highest water quality but also of savings on manpower, chemical consumption and maintenance costs. A win-win situation indeed - service delivered with a splash!