AU alumnus, team devise cheap water purification method
PRAYAGRAJ: Water contamination is a big problem, not only in India but a large part of the world and providing safe drinking water to all is no doubt a challenging task.
However, to make filthy water drinkable in a simple step, a young scientist and an alumnus of Allahabad University (AU), Subhash Chandra Singh and his colleagues in the University of Rochester, have developed a technology wherein a piece of aluminum works as a tool for easy water purification using only sunlight.
The work done by Subhash and his team in New York, US promises to solve the global problem of clean and affordable drinking water.
“The technology works when the piece of aluminum is hit by a quick laser light and turns into a super-wicking, super-light absorbing, super-water evaporating surface, removing all impurities from the water,” said Subhash, who did his BSc, MSc and PhD from AU and is now a post doctoral fellow under Prof Guo at Rochester University.
He belongs to Rajanipur village of Jaunpur district and his father Ravindra Nath Singh is a farmer.
The work, titled ‘Solar-trackable super-wicking black metal panel for photothermal water sanitation’, has been accomplished by a team of eight other scientists along with Subhash and Prof Guo. It was published in the July 13 edition of the prestigious journal, ‘Nature Sustainability’ and was funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, US Army Research Office and National Science Foundation, US.
“The global water crisis is continuously increasing due to industrialization, population increase, climate change etc and one out of nine people does not have access to clean water today. About 2.5 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation and every minute a child dies of a water-borne disease. A solution to this problem is to recycle our waste water to make it drinkable, just like the natural rain cycle,” said Subhash.
In nature, dirty water vaporizes, makes clouds and finally rains in the form of purified water, which can be called natural distillation. However, the natural rain cycle is very slow, uncontrolled and cannot give fresh water whenever needed.
“An alternative is to make a solar-thermal distillation that can provide enough fresh water. So we developed this revolutionary technology,” he said.
A one-metre square area of the device can produce 24 to 64 litres of clean water with contaminant levels 10-100 times below the World Health Organisation standard of safe drinking water.