First Global Academy wins another Award

First Global Academy won the Gold award for “Islamic Finance Service Provider of the Year” – 2016 at the inaugural Islamic Finance Forum of South Asia (IFFSA) awards ceremony organized by UTO EduConsult - Sri Lanka. The event was held at the Galadari Hotel, Colombo, on 27 July 2016.Thewinners were selected by an independent panel of judges from the Banking & Finance Industry led by KPMG. The award ceremony recognized all the prominent industry players who have excelled in their respective categories in the South Asian region.

Commenting on First Global Academy’s winning moment, CEO Mr.Muath Mubarak said: “It is an immense honour to be awarded by the prestigious IFFSA as the Islamic Finance Service Provider of the Year, which is an important accolade for a dynamic institution such as ours. We remain committed to continuous improvement in all aspects of our work going forward by setting the standards.”

The inaugural IFFSA Awards 2016 was held in conjunction with the first Islamic Finance Forum of South Asia. This platform recognized and addressed the key challenges and the future potential development, as well as ways to create awareness in this vast and emerging industry.

First Global Academy’s CEO – Muath Mubarak receiving the Gold Award for Islamic Finance Service Provider of the Year from Mr. Omar Kayaam- CEO Aberdeen Group at the IFFSA Awards held at Galadari Hotel on the 27th July 2016.

FGAis the leading institution in Sri Lanka to promote training and career development programs in the field of Islamic Banking, Finance and Takaful. It has alsobeen rec- ognized as a significant talent supply institution in Asia & Middle East region. FGA aims to be the centre of professional excellence for the Islamic Banking & Finance Industry, by providing qualifications and competencies to cater to this very vibrant and lucrative industry.

FGA has pioneered the introduction of some highly recognized and quality courses of study in Islamic Banking and Finance in Sri Lanka since 2006.FGA is an award winning and an accredited educational institute on a local and international level. It is the only institution in the country recognized as the 'Best Islamic Finance Education Provider' by the prestigious Global Banking & Finance Review magazine - UK.

In addition it is also the only educational institution which has been recognized as “Education First” in the first ever Islamic Finance country report 2011 by KPMG – Sri Lanka and was recently covered in the Global Islamic Finance Forum – GIFF2012 – Country and Business Guide, as a ‘Talent Development’ institution for the Islamic finance industry, coming from Sri Lanka.

FGA has been accredited by a number of institutions such as Chartered Institute for Securities & Investments (CISI) – UK, City & Guilds – UK ,Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA) as well as the Sri Lanka Institute for Credit Management. Recently FGA’s programs have also beenrecognized by the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC) - Sri Lanka.

Please call us on+94117395090 -3 or visit our website www.firstglobalacademy.com for more information

Many of these plants are now operated by the Community Based Organizations (CBOs), which enables access to many people. CKDu endemic areas are rich in high hardness and fluoride in water. Scientists in the world have faced a difficulty in finding a single universal solution other than high tech methods such as Reverse Osmosis (RO) in removing those at once. On the other hand filter media are not that efficient as ROs.

How does the mechanism of "Reverse Osmosis" concept applicable in RO-plants?

In RO water purification method forces water through a semi-permeable membrane, which filters out a selected number of water contaminants, depending on the size of the contaminants. The RO membrane removes almost all ions present in water, such as cadmium, arsenic, lead, and copper, and volatile organic compounds, sodium, potassium, cal-

This will not be a huge issue for the time being, since the first & most important thing is to provide safe drinking water to the CKDu endemic areas. That is because people would get the necessary minerals through the food; however, in the long run there would be effects of drinking demineralized water. Hence, monitoring is essential.

What are the disadvantages of using RO for water purification?

RO treatment process has few disadvantages at the same time. Although there can be disadvantages of using RO permeate for drinking in the long run, it can be easily eliminated either by selective membrane for essential ions or addition of minerals afterwards. However, the RO concentrate which is rich in dissolved salts directly releases in to the irrigation systems or dumps on the soil. This can create environmental issues in the near future.

When water is passing through the semi-permeable membrane, it removes most of minerals and components from inlet water to about 90-95% with an average of 40-50% of inlet water. That emphasize the concentration will become almost double with its own ions in the rejected water. The high total dissolved solids (TDS) and other impurities in RO rejected depending upon the intake water quality can make it prohibitive for discharge environment as it can be caused the contamination of water bodies directly and soils according to the complex nature of the soil.

How efficient is the RO process in comparison with other membrane technologies such as electrodialysis reversal, nanofiltration, membrane dis tillation, etc in producing drinking water? Why RO does is necessarily useful?

The field of RO membrane desalination has rapidly grown over the past 40 years. Membrane Distillation is known since 1963 and is still being developed at laboratory stage for different purposes and not fully implemented in industry. It has some significant advantages over RO process, including lower operating temperature and pressure, and thus possible to use energy sources such as renewable solar heat or waste heat, product quality, and higher resistance to fouling. Electrodialysis reversal is similar to RO and used for high TDS water desalinization.

However, RO is better than nanofiltration in terms of water purification. Anyway, all these methods are very expensive in terms of usage.

How to overcome the environmental contami nation associated with the discarded water from RO plants?

About 50-70% of raw water with higher concentrations of ions (calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, fluoride etc) release from RO systems with no beneficial use but will generate environmental concerns due to excessive dissolve salts and fluoride, which are CKDu sensitive parameters. This project focused to investigate the potential remedial measures for RO rejected water through phytoremediation process using Constructed Wetlands (CW) with low cost materials and indigenous plants, before discharging into the environment.

Constructed Wetlands (CW) or Engineered Wetlands (EW) are man-made land plots same as natural wetland which are used to purify soil and waste waters depending upon the requirement.

A constructed Wetland system needs a growth media for the Macrophyte other than Free Floating Macrophyte based Free Water Surface (FWS) Constructed Wetland system. For Sub Surface Flow (SSF) systems the growing media is a very important factor when designing the wetland system. The SSF wetland is typically constructed as a bed or channel containing appropriate media with coarse rock, gravel, sans and other soils. However the soil should be compatible with the plants in general. In SSF and FWS wetlands, where the plants are growing in soil under the water logged conditions, roots, rhizomes and stems physically penetrate the soil layer and provide effective fluid movement by increasing hydraulic conductivity. Hence, the growth media is an essential factor to be considered.

Where was the experimental set-up tested? Is there any promising result with regard to the improvement of water quality of rejected water?

A field experiment was carried out focusing the Sangilikanadarawa at Medawachchiya community based RO water supply unit. The rejected water from the RO unit was exceeding the environmental regulations for alkalinity, hardness, total dissolved solids and fluoride. Two types of constructed wetlands (CW): surface and subsurface water bio-geo CW were established and tested to measure the removal efficiency of RO concentrates through phytoremediation. Locally available soil, Calicut tile and biochar were used with proportions of 81, 16.5 and 2.5% by weight respectively were used as filter materials in the subsurface. Vertiver grass (Sevendara in Sinhalese) and Scirpus grossus (Gallehe Pan in Sinhalese) were the indigenous plants which were carefully selected for the sub surface wetland while Water Lettuce and Water Hyacinth (invasive plants) were chosen for free water surface CW. Both constructed wetlands were fed with uniform flow of RO concentrate and water quality parameters were tested periodically against two controls systems for given hydraulic retention time.

The results showed that the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Hardness, Total Alkalinity and Fluoride were reduced considerably and met desirable levels of stipulated ambient standards. From 20-85% removal of the TDS, Hardness, Total Alkalinity and Fluoride were observed from the pilot scale unit. About 20-40% reduction was observed from the free water surface constructed wetlands whereas the highest reduction was observed from the subsurface flow constructed wetlands where Sevendara and Gallehe pan were grown. This study indicated a great promise of purifying aforesaid ions in water which is obvious and considerable in ground water sources in North Central Province. End of the life cycle of the geo and bio materials they can be reused as a potting mixture, produce compost and burn in brick kilns. With a low construction and maintenance cost respect to other water purifying methods this approach directly dealt with locally available aquatic plants and eco-friendly filter materials. Therefore the invented bio-geo constructed wetland is a sustainable, economical and effective option for reducing high concentrations of RO rejected water before discharging into the inland waters. Furthermore, NWSDB expects to implement the invented CW system to treat RO rejected water to Community Based Organizations (CBO) along with CKDu preventive programs at NCP. Workshops are planned to carryout to provide technical support for the CBOs for Site selection, construction, operation and maintenance.

Biochar can be used as soil amendment. Which can be used as bio chars or how to produce biochars for an efficient remediation of water?

Biochar, which is derived from the thermal decomposition of carbon-rich biomass can be produced by any type of organic waste material such as agricultural waste (rice husk), timber waste (saw dust), factory waste (tea waste and other wood waste) and even from municipal solid waste.

In Sri Lanka, biochar is already being produced as a factory by-product from dendro power industry and energy residue from tea industry.

How efficient is it to use “Biochars” to treat envi ronmental pollutants? Does it show any promis ing results?

Our records indicate the municipal solid waste (MSW) biochar is very efficient in landfill gas, volatile organic compounds, organics like pesticide and heavy metal removal from landfill leachates. So that material has a potential to be reused to reduce the pollution from MSW dump sites. Our MSW landfill leachates are rich in heavy metals such as Lead, Zinc, Nickel etc, organic pollutants (volatile organic compounds-VOCs) and nutrients.

National Institute of Fundamental Studies (NIFS) via a grant from National Research Council and JICASATREPS is in the process of producing excellent results in removing benzene, toluene and xylene like VOCs from the landfill leachate using MSW biochar.

Further, NIFS research results indicate the biochars can even be produced by pyrolyzing invasive plants in low or no oxygen which will reduce environmental burden in another sense.

Do you have plans to patent this?

No, we do not think so. All these research were conducted using tax-payers money. Therefore the benefit must go directly to them. Instead of patenting, we thought of introducing biochar use to the general public to enhance the productivity of crop cultivation and water and wastewater remediation. We believe that is what we must do as scientists paid by the tax-payees instead of patenting and selling patents to companies.

In addition to treating the rejected water from the RO-plant what can be done with it? Any use of it?

We have tested the rejected water to be used in brick manufacturing and that has demonstrated of producing high strength bricks than that was produced by normal water.

You have started a pilot scale project in North Central Province to remediate the contami nated water discharged from the RO-plant. However there may be some conflicts with the project implementation such as social accep tance of introducing such a new method, their level of awareness & support to continue it? What about this?

We would like to state here that we have a very high social acceptance after the project was implemented since they see the outcome. And they have understood the cost involved is very low and acceptable for them. Project implementation was bit hard in the beginning since we could not find a land to establish the constructed wetland however, Ms. R.M. Somalatha, a village person agreed providing part of her land for the testing and it was very convenient as the land was so close to the RO-plant at Sangilikanadarawa. During establishment the villagers extended their fullest support by various means and now in continuing the project.

Who sponsored the project?

Funding Agency: National Institute of Fundamental Studues, Open University of Sri Lanka and National Water Supply and Drainage Board Institutional Collaborators: Mr. S.C. Rathnayake, Mr. H.A. Jayasiri, Mr. Asela Bandara Karunashinghe from National Water Supply and Drainage Board Studentships: Ms. T.W.L.R. Thalgaspitiya & Ms. U.L.S. Yasarathne Dr. Meththika is currently working in the disciplines of water and soil quality monitoring, assessment & remediation. About 70 of her scholarly works have published through many international indexed journals. She has been able to maintain an H-index of 15 in Scopus & 19 in Google Scholar. With years of her research excellence, Dr. Meththika was awarded by number of prestigious awards in science including Third world Academy of Sciences – National Research Council, Sri Lanka Award for Young Scientist, 2016, The Most Outstanding Scientist of the Year 2015 (NIFS), Presidential Awards for Scientific Publications, P G Cooray Medal for Best Young Geoscientist of the Year 2006 (GSSL), etc. At present Dr. Meththika serves as a Senior Research Fellow at National Institute of Fundamental Studies, Kandy.

Dr Meththika has been worked in partnership with Dr Bandunee Liyanage to investigate the potential of implementation of constructed wetlands to overcome the environmental impacts associated with RO-plants in the CKDu affected areas in Sri Lanka. Currently Dr Bandunee serves as a senior lecturer at Department of Civil Engineering, The Open University of Sri Lanka. She is specialized in Environmental Engineering & Management and is engaged in consultancy projects & investigations with state collaborators. Dr. Bandunee authored several book chapters in addition to her research publications in refereed journals. Discussed & Prepared By, Kusala Madhushani

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