Saving Water | NIT student innovates ‘Food Grain Washer and Water Purifier’

Water is a vital resource, a precious commodity and itssaving is essential. While the concept of water stress is relatively new, it isthe difficulty of obtaining sources of fresh water for use during a period oftime and may result in further depletion and deterioration of available waterresources. Its management is imperative and if water harnessing and saving isnot considered as an element of innovations, the future survival would bedifficult for nations.  With globalpopulation grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.616 billion in 2018 and furtherexpected to keep growing, with a forecast of 8.6 billion by mid-2030, 9.8billion by mid-2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, if nothing substantial  is done for saving this resource, the thirdworld war will be fought for water.  Withthe unabated inhabitants’ growths, the demand of such valuable resource hasincreased both from agriculture and industry; researchers and experts indicatedthat this crisis is only likely to worsen.

Presently, more than 1.2 billion people of the world lackaccess to clean drinking water. Many nations are already experiencing ashortage of water resources and will see their water issues worsen, causinghardships for millions. South Africa along with many other African and MiddleEast countries are presently encountering the water shortage problem, whereinthe government has formed task forces for even distribution of clean water tohouseholds under security. Water shortages may be caused by climate change,such as altered weather patterns including droughts or floods, increasedpollution, and increased human demand and overuse/ misuse of water.

   

A water crisis generally results with the available potable,unpolluted water within a region is less than that region’s demand. Waterscarcity is being driven by two converging phenomena: growing freshwater useand depletion of usable freshwater resources. Water scarcity could be a resultof two mechanisms: physical (absolute) water scarcity and economic waterscarcity, whereas the physical water scarcity is a result of inadequate naturalwater resources to supply a region’s demand, and economic water scarcity is aresult of poor management of the sufficient available water resources, whichalso includes excessive use and wastage of pure water used for domestic andagriculture purposes.

Innovations and management of water resources is arsenal tofight for such a global crisis. Many institutions around the world have alreadystarted to innovatively design processes and systems for water harvesting andwater management. Many innovative ideas have come forth for obtaining aplausible solution to save water, right from Rooftop rain water harvesting tocreating artificial Glaciers. Innovators are also trying to design and developappliance and machines which could be used effectively for water saving whileutilising the water for domestic or agriculture purpose.

Shubam Kumar, an engineering student and an innovator at NITSrinagar, working with IIED Centre NIT Srinagar, has recently designed andfabricated a prototype of a “Multipurpose Food Grain Washer and Water PurifyingMachine” for saving substantial amount of water that gets wasted as a result ofwashing grains and other stuff in the kitchen, during cooking. This machinecould also be effectively utilised in restaurants and hotel kitchens for savingsubstantial amount of water.

The motivational factor for Shubhum came through his motheras it was his vision to make her happy during the kitchen time as she would getupset in the kitchen while cooking due to excessive water requirements and itscontinuous wastage, since water availability in his village was limited.

“Whenever my mother entered the kitchen for routine kitchenactivities involving washing and cleaning of food grains and other stuff, largeamount of water was needed for washing which was wasted due to eitherineffective system designs or lack of water management habits. I wanted tosolve this grave problem, and that was perhaps one of the key factors, Ipreferred to select engineering as my career and innovate in this area,” saysShubhum.

After joining NIT Srinagar, he came across its Innovation,Incubation and Entrepreneurship Development (IIED) Centre, where he wasmotivated to make his dream come true and he started to work on the design of sucha machine. He innovatively designed and fabricated a multipurpose washing andwater purification machine, which could effectively and efficiently meetvarious kitchen chores such as winnowing, washing of various eatable items andsubsequently purifying the same used water for drinking. The machine alsopurifies any unclean water from other source which could be used for drinking.The estimated cost of this machine, when manufactured on a large scale would beabout Rs 6,000 -Rs10,000 only.

 Shubham has alreadywon a number of accolades such as 1st prize in IDEA CHALLENGE-2018  in NIT Srinagar, 2nd prize in INNOWIZION inMMMUT in 2019, 3rd prize in START UP INDIA programme in JKEDI Pampore in 2018.He has successfully presented his work at IIT Kanpur for a national exhibition,and was also selected for a grant, in the NEW GEN IEDC in University ofKashmir. Shubhum’s innovation was recently shortlisted by the MHRD sponsoredSmart India Hackathon 2019 in the hardware edition and will showcase hisinnovation at Chennai next month.

“Since my childhood I had observed that generally about 5-7liters of water get wasted in a day from a typical Indian kitchen while washingfood grains before cooking,” says Shubhum. If we are able to save say only twolitres of water per day from a single household, it would save about 360million litres of water in a year from only about 10 lakh Indian kitchens.Hence, this machine is going to save gallons and gallons of water, ifimplemented successfully in Indian kitchens.

The machine has two parts, the upper and the lower. Theupper part contains food grain washer, winnowing process, flour sieving processwhereas the lower part contains water purifier and water storage tank. Theheight of the machine is about 2.5 feet with a length and breadth of 1 footeach and has a steel and fiber body. The upper part of machine utilizes a DCmotor with few mechanical processes for winnowing and washing of food grainswhereas the lower part contains sedimentation process, RO and UV systems, forpurification and recycling of waste water from any source. “I have worked dayand night during my winter vacation and built the machine as a proper workingmodel”.   The machine can wash 1 kg offood grain just in 30 to 40 seconds. The water purifier system designed forpurifying impure water can purify about 100 GPD (gallon per day) of water.

“We are further working with the NewGen IED Centre,University of Kashmir to obtain patent and commercialise the machine,” he said.

Author is the head of IIED Centre, NIT Srinagar

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