Hyderabad Company Installs World’s First Atmospheric Water Generator At ONGC’s Offshore Rig

Getting a steady supply of drinking water is a problem not only in the most backward areas of any country, but in modern facilities, too. One such place has been the Mumbai High oil drilling platforms in the Arabian Sea. The offshore oilfield, about 75 metre deep in the water, was discovered in 1974 and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) pumps up about 12 million metric tonnes (MMt) of oil a year from the 1,659 MMt the oilfield holds. The supply of drinking water for the officials and crew manning the drilling platforms 176 km away from Mumbai, however, has been a logistical challenge since production began in 1976. No longer: Maithri Aquatech, a Hyderabad-headquartered manufacturer of atmospheric water generators, has installed its machines on the oil rigs. “These are the first installations of their kind in the world!” says an excited Ramkrishna Mukkavilli, founder-chairman of Maithri, which has set up four AWGs after winning an ONGC tender. The entire system for these machines – which cost about Rs15 lakh each against the normal ones at Rs10 lakh – had to be specially designed to suit the conditions, Ramkrishna explains. The evaporation coils needed to be strong enough that they wouldn’t get blown away in the high wind velocity of nearly 150-180 kmph, while the entire machine was made of stainless steel to resist seawater corrosion.