CSR: Producing Water From Thin Air
Global warming and climate change has taken up the world by the storm. Floods, droughts and hurricanes have increased in different parts of India in last few years. Droughts in particular have been significantly high in many states, causing extreme water scarcity. This has also resulted in may farmer suicides. According to a study, India has seen nearly 60,000 suicides by farmers in last three decades due to climate change.
With our ground water resources already depleting, there is not much fresh water available for daily use. But with urbanisation the demands are always increasing. India is consuming more water than it is generating every year. And to be able to meet the growing demands for a long time, we might just need to learn magic to pull water out of thin air. Which is exactly what Uravu managed to do.
The process of converting the vapour in the air into water is not particularly new. The method is actually used in the air conditioners since ages. The technology that actually generates water out of vapour has been developed and is making its rounds in the market for the irrigation purposes and industrial use. However, it has not yet been introduced to a larger scale in residential use because of the inconvenience caused by the heavy apparatus and high energy consumption by them.
Uravu, a Hyderabad based startup managed to fight all odds by creating a system with a simpler interface than the refrigerating systems, which is cost effective and uses solar energy to instead of electricity. It uses a proprietary hygroscopic material that sucks vapour from the air. The solar collector uses the solar thermal energy to further convert this vapour into water.
The machine is passive. It captures the vapour at night, which gets heated after sunrise, leading to the production of water. The water can then directly be piped to homes for use. It can also be used for drinking by attaching a mineral cartridge to the device.
Uravu’s prototype produces around 50 litres of water a day currently. They are working to raise that amount to 2000 litres a day.
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