Kolkata entrepreneur generates drinking water from moisture

  

                                         Director of AKVO, Navkaran Singh Bagga

  

 As the country faces a ground water crisis, a Kolkata-based entrepreneur has come out with a solution to generate water by extracting atmospheric moisture and making it usable for drinking purpose.

AKVO, a unit of Trishan Exports, has developed a prototype which is ready with its commercial production, using Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG) technology, with capacity to produce 1000 litre per day pure water. The company is in the process to start production of equipment for domestic use also.

The equipment run on the basic principle of converting atmospheric vapour into liquid form and purify it further so that it can be used for drinking. “It’s like harvesting humidity when it is in the air,” said director of AKVO Navkaran Singh Bagga, who was in the capital recently, while speaking to this newspaper.

The device consists of a system wherein the water extracted from the atmosphere is subjected to four-stage purification. Some minerals are added in the process to make it sweet to drink. So at the end of the process, the final water is completely safe for drinking and is just like RO water. The USP of the product is that it uses unlimited source of water, which is natural and abundant and that no separate purification is required. Humidity/moisture is present everywhere. If some moisture at a particular place is used for condensation, moisture of surrounding areas fills in at that place after some time.  Normally, the humidity is around 80% at a temperature of 28 degree Celsius.

When asked if separate equipment needed to be manufactured as percentage of humidity varies from place to place, he said: “We are trying to customise the product depending on the humidity of a particular location. For example, it will be easier to extract water in places like Kolkata or Chennai because of the presence of high quantity of moisture in the atmosphere, but it will consume more power in dry places like Rajasthan. We are trying to come out with a solution which can work best in low humidity areas.”

Input from Sunday Gaurdian Live