Water is in the air nearly everywhere on earth, even in the most parched desert. But that doesn’t help much when you’re thirsty because most of that H20 is in its vaporized form, not its handy liquid state. The highest amount of water on the planet is in the atmosphere. Indian Researchers found the solution to water crisis, a Mechanism that harnesses water vapour in the air and converts it into drinking water.

It comes into the market from the next month it can be useful for both domestic as well as commercial purpose, the former is capable of producing 30 liters of filtered water within 24 hours in the case of temperature (hot at 900C, room temperature, and cold at 80C). The commercial setup will produce a 1,000 litres in the same period of time. A plug-and-use model for domestic use will cost Rs 50-55,000.

Researchers at the city-based Scalene Energy Research Institute (SERI) have developed a Rain Tunnel

Reasearch started on rain Tunnel began four years ago at SERI, a 24-year-old organisation that does research in healthcare (mainly heart disease, kidney disease and cancer); energy; water and food. The technology was also patented about one and a half years ago.

Water is in the air nearly everywhere on planet- 12 trillion litres. And for 3,000 years, people have been trying to tap into it via rudimentary processes – laying big tunnels, reducing the temperature using clay and collecting the condensed water. “Then refrigeration technology came in, which started using condensation,” explains Dr Rajah Vijay Kumar, Director, SERI, who worked with a team of 12 to create the Rain Tunnel. But in this process the condensation results by taking input as high amount of energy which gives the cost raise in water produced. “Some machines that produce the same quantity of water as the rain tunnel cost $2500, because the energy consumption and cost of operation is high.”

How it works?

• A one cubic feet box draws in the air with an air circulator, then it is passed through PM of 2.5 microns filter in order to remove “pollution and the other matter.
• UV kills and removes all the airborne bacteria and viruses.
• Then, the temperature, pressure and flow rate is adjusted (depending on the atmospheric pressure of the location) to create an atmosphere suitable to agglomerate the water vapour to form clouds, “just like it takes place in nature,”.
• “Doesn’t the humidity rise and air pressure fall before it rains?” This is where the Rain Tunnel is unique it uses hypersonic sound waves to precipitate the concentrated water vapour. “We take a small quantity of seed water and subject it to a few million cycles of high frequency sound. This breaks them down and generates nano water particles, which we then freeze into ice crystals.” Nano crystals don’t require a very low temperature to freeze.
• Then it gives nano ice crystals, as per the property of ice, begin to absorb more water vapour, and swell. “And the bigger they get, they lose that property, begin to melt into water, which falls as rain and is collected in a drip tray and into a tank.
• It then passes through four stages of filtration – sediment filtering, carbon filtering, ultra filtering at .04 microns and UV exposure – from which it is sent to the dispenser. As people draw water from the dispenser, more water is instantaneously filtered and sterlised and makes its way in.”

Kumar explains- when machine is plugged into an electrical socket and switched on, within 10-15 hours, it starts dispensing water. “And once the dry air – from which the water vapour has been removed – is let out, it will absorb more water and the cycle continues, describing how one litre of water removed will produce another litre and so on.

Applications and Benefits:

While there will be a marginal difference in the speed at which the water is generated depending on the atmospheric humidity in different places, it will work at any place where there is even 10 ppm (parts per million or 10 ml per 1,000 ml of water) of water vapour in the atmosphere.

Dr Kumar lists the pros – from purity to a higher PH level. That of groundwater, he says, is 6.7/6.3. “This has come straight from the atmosphere and is uncontaminated by the soil. With bottled water, you don’t know the source or what process it has undergone. And UV and RO filtering can filter out everything else except pesticide and fertiliser residue. Sometimes, groundwater is also contaminated by substances such as arsenic, nitrite and heavy metals. RO only brings down TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) and removes salt content, it doesn’t remove these huge molecules, while UV filtering removes only bacteria.”

While the price can seem high, Dr Kumar believes that it actually cuts cost over the years – 0.56 per litre over 24 hours as per domestic consumption patterns and the usage and cost of electricity at home. “It’s convenient because it doesn’t need anything other than electricity, and removes the possibility of waterborne diseases. In rural areas, a machine that can make 10,000 litres of water, which is equal to one inch of rain, can resolve the problem of walking huge distances to fetch water.”

Slippery matters:

• 52 per cent of borewell water and 59 per cent of tap water in Bengaluru is not potable.
• They contain 8.4 per cent and 19 per cent E.coli bacteria respectively
• The groundwater in at least half of Bengaluru is contaminated with sewage water.

Why Bengaluru Needs this technology:

Earlier Bengaluru was home to of 800-odd lakes. But now only about 200 lakes remain. This area is 3,000 feet above sea level. So, water has to be pumped up by 100 km. It makes Bengaluru’s water the costliest in all of India and Asia at Rs 82 per kilolitre, vs Rs 28 per kilolitre in Delhi. Nearly 509 million litres of this water goes waste every day because of our bad distribution network. The groundwater is over-exploited by more than 150 per cent. Average depth of borewells in areas such as Marathahalli, Sarjapur, HSR Layout is about 1,200 feet and is going deeper.