Partner Institutes
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| University of Oxford | The Institute of Environmental Science and Engineering, NUST |
Project brief:
Pakistan is an agricultural country with a population of approximately 180 million and a current growth rate of 1.8%. The rapid increase in population, coupled with growing urbanisation and industrialisation, has resulted in a shortage of fresh water supplies across the country, particularly in the major cities. Moreover, the few sources of fresh water still left are heavily contaminated because of untreated waste disposal.
The INSPIRE partnership between NUST, Pakistan and the University of Oxford poses a novel way to clean water and make it useable for the general public. The project will utilise a new technology known as a membrane bioreactor (MBR), an efficient and cost-effective system of treating sewage that is being introduced worldwide.
The facilities at Oxford and NUST will be used for evaluating the treatment technology, as well as training faculty and graduate students in the field of environmental engineering. This partnership will also open up new avenues for research collaboration between Pakistan and other European countries, particularly the Netherlands, Germany and France, as the research findings will be regularly presented in specialised conferences on membrane technology, wastewater reclamation and reuse, and biological processes etc. The project will involve setting up a laboratory-scale MBR at the Institute of Environmental Science and Engineering, NUST. This will allow students and faculty to interact with cutting edge technology on a first-hand basis and come up with innovative ways to overcome the country’s current water woes.
Lessons learnt:
Teams from both universities have learned that there is considerable knowledge and expertise that can be shared between them and on that basis, further improvement in MBR technology can be investigated and developed. In this regard, the draw solutions for forward osmosis MBR (FO-MBR) are being developed and optimised at the University of Oxford and the MBR design, setup and operation of variable configurations is being investigated at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Engineering (IESE), NUST. The combined efforts of both teams led to a successful international workshop, “Technological advances and challenges in water reclamation and reuse” on 8-9 December 2011 at the NUST campus in Islamabad in which 75 professionals and 200 graduate and post-graduate students participated.Challenges faced:
- The main issue being faced is the lack of funds to purchase permanent equipment for establishing and executing bench-scale MBRs at NUST.
The impacts/benefits of the project:
- The establishment of an MBR demonstration facility at bench-scale for water reclamation and reuse at NUST as well as University of Oxford. Such a facility will contribute to the advancement of MBR technology worldwide, in general and in Pakistan and the UK, in particular. Students and faculty from both institutions will benefit immensely from this facility.
- International workshops jointly conducted by NUST and the University of Oxford at the NUST campus in Islamabad have been pivotal in providing information to professionals, faculty, researchers and students on membrane science technology and applications keeping in view the local perspective of water reclamation and reuse.
- Exchange of PhD students between the institutions, particularly the short-term, four-month visits of PhD students from NUST to the University of Oxford, will help in achieving the research objectives and also add to their personal and professional development.
Key contacts:
Dr Nick Hankins, University of Oxford
nick.hankins@eng.ox.ac.uk, www.ox.ac.uk
Dr. Sher Jamal Khan, Institute of Environmental Science and Engineering, NUST
s.jamal@iese.nust.edu.pk, www.nust.edu.pk
