Water from Thin AirThe new normal

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen

Namaskar pranaam today I am here to save

my thought about water and make a

request to all of you I walk with water

we use water every day now like daily

life we are so dependent on water that

every action we take in some or other

way affected by water our industries run

on water

our economies run on water or energy

sectors run on water or this very

platform on which I am standing when

this was built water was used for this

the air which we are breathing and which

is allowing us to you know live in this

atmosphere has water content in it which

is allowing us to live in these

conditions water is is still what is a

mystery which is still to be understood

it is a compound it’s a molecule which

does not behave usual it does not show

usual properties

usually when we cool down a molecule or

material it sinks water expands and it

forms the ice floats on the water water

in the ambient condition of Earth it

should not have been in the liquid phase

it should have been in the vapor phase

but just because of the mysteries of the

wonderful forces it’s in the liquid

force on the earth even though being

such an a wonderful relevant on earth

water is in problem and since the water

is in problem the humankind is also in

problem this is a picture of India

sharing 54% of India is living in high

or very high water stress region 780

million people globally 163 million

people in India does not have access to

the clean drinking water in India we

have varieties of problem this causes

this water stress region we have arsenic

problem which around 63 million people

in India was living in ate arsenic

affected States and does not get clean

drinking water in India around eleven

point four

people are staying in fluoride affected

states even my home state Rajasthan and

this very state Telangana is most

affected by fluoride we get water

contaminated every year by the floods

happening in the Gangetic belt or the

southern part of India and even more

bigger problem is that we have many

reasons in India where we don’t have

water at all

we don’t have water because the natural

water reservoirs has been dried up there

is no surface water or there is no

enough infrastructure layer down to

supply water to these villages water is

such involved in the daily accents that

even out of 17 sustainable development

goals declared by United Nation six

teens are directly dependent or

correlated to the water this is a

picture of me so I come from a village

in Rajasthan where whenever I go back

home I collect water from the municipal

water pipe system this is here me

collecting water and then we take it

back to our home nowadays the scene is

that this piped water does not supply

water even in village we are buying

water tanker which was a usual scenario

in the metro cities my life is dependent

so much on the water that I don’t just

depend on it water actually runs my life

it actually runs my bread and butter it

gives me the financial help the social

duties everything and I’m happy to let

it do so it was more than enough for me

and by doing this I’m also completing my

social duties and I get the free extra

credit for it so I work at IIT Madras

and with viral technologies we started

viral technologies - in half his back

and with our work at IIT Madras with

Prasad Pradeep who was recently

conferred with the Padma Sri Award for

his contribution in science and

technology we when we started the work

back in 2013 we thought we will come up

with a device which can give you clean

drinking water in flood affected areas

we came up this with this water purifier

bottle which can give you drinking water

in front of bacteria if you see here in

a bottle there’s a water which is

and on the other glass we are having the

clean drinking water this is a very

simple design which performs four stage

of filtration and removes the bacterial

and geo-specific chemical contaminant

from the drinking water we received gan

geunyang technological award for this

work this work now this is a issue when

we have flooded water but there are

issues when we don’t have water

something similar to my village where

people have to travel to get water

according to a UNICEF report globally

every day around 200 millions are spent

by women’s and children’s just to

transport water just to put that in

perspective that is equal to 25 millions

young people working for a single day

just to transport the water so we are

spending so much of time only for the

transportation of water but even though

we do that we are not ensured that what

the water which were collecting is

drinking water because the surface water

is contaminated it’s not all the time

pure rolling water systems has been

available in India we fill the water in

it and roll it to our houses and we can

so so that we does not carry the water

on our head we are free from that load

but since the water origin point is not

pure we have to carry this we have to

further purify it our home all

contribution to this was that we put in

a water purification system such a fish

in that by the time you travel back to

your home within the 30 to 40 minutes

the water which comes out from this

roller is it drinking it’s a portable

water so you see here is a performer

graph showing the performance what in so

this is ten thousand colonies of

bacteria comes down to ten something

within 40 minutes this isn’t right the

other problem was arsenic problem which

I discussed said IIT Madras team worked

on the arsenic solutions and they have

developed solution which is very

affordable and around six million people

are right now using it in India right

now I am a part of a team which is

working on the even advanced version of

the material this work this work which

we are doing is supported by Millennium

Alliance and which is headed by

Federation of India

members of Commerce in India and

industries and we were given a grant to

pilot this project in yupi once the

project is piloted this will be most

affordable arsenic removal technology in

India now this is a scene when we have

contaminated water and we can purify it

but what happens when we don’t have

water last year on 19 June 2019

Jenny zerorez was declared for Jenny

Jenny did not had any water

residents of Jenny was forced to get

tank of water while paying to attend to

50 per cell per liter and even waited

waiting for that water for 1 to 15 days

in a time when we can get food in 30

minutes we were not getting water on the

time even a year in 2017 gap town was

declared a zero day India’s 21 more

cities are on the same line and on the

words of running out of water with such

sort of scenario we have to look for any

other alternate where we can get

drinking water right now in this hall

where we are standing today we have more

than hundreds liter of water available

in air and similarly in the Earth’s

ambient condition we have around 1.4 to

million million million liters of water

available at any point of given time

locally that concentration keeps going

depleting or getting replenished because

of the global air current which brings

humidity from the oceans but that was

still there it’s a renewable source of

water and which we can tap in it’s

available at all location of Earth so

all my next work on which I have been

working in world the most and is being

implemented is atmospheric water

generator so we follow the systems the

way the nature does in nature we have

two most celebrated example which

performs the atmospheric water

harvesting stain Okara beetle and the

cake type land stain Okara beetle is a

beetle which lives his whole life in

Namib Desert where there is no water but

still it survives so what how does it

survives so the wings of Namib beetle

had a certain precise physical

structures and with chemical

functionalities which are hydrophilic

and hydrophobic

allows us to condense the humidity

available in there and then drink it

so once the humidity is collect on its

things it usually go on the top of the

sand dunes stay there inclined for 4 to

5 years and the water comes to the his

mouth and that’s how he survives his

whole life

similarly the cake type plant it has

thorns the small tips which which are

the nucleation site for water to be

condensed and as the tips goes to the

stem the diameter is getting increased

and with the increased diameter the

water is actually getting a gradient of

Laplace force which is driving water to

move to the stem and from there water

drops to the root of the cacti plant

these are - you know a phenomenal

example which are best studies in the

science literature we follow something

similar to the cacti plant so this is a

lab setup which we use in the lab when

we started the work on the condensation

we can do atmosphere water harvesting by

actually two ways condensation or by the

absorption but if you go by the

adsorption method we will have to use a

system even something similar to you

know with the volume and footprint of

this X which it would give you around 10

to 20 litres of water a day for maximum

10 to 30 litres of water a day but if

you do the design a system with

condensers and best technology the same

volume and the footprint will give us

more than 300 liters of water with with

this capacity to build this capacity to

build more water we started working with

the condensation and this is a work in

our lab so when actually we were doing

this work in 2015 so we had two labs at

IIT Madras and I used to work till late

night so what happens one day in mile of

fence from the lab usually calls me you

know give me playing call saying that

this is professor so one day actually

professor called to talk about the one

experiment which were going to do so he

called and says me here this is

professor and I was like yeah I thought

I wonder some sense that this is a plain

cold like yeah okay so this is

precipitation Monica I know what so what

what’s what we should do and he gets

like irritated in like hey this is your

supervisor processor Pradeep

like yeah I know what next but then he

really gets irritated and he’s like what

are you what happened to you are you in

the lab and I like dude you have called

to the landline what do you think we’re

up well as I would be and he’s really

mad at me

and his tone gets little stiffer and

it’s like the mess I call you disgust in

an experiment and then I was like okay

maybe he’s the right person to talk and

then we discuss an experiment which we

usually do the experiment in night when

the humidity content is higher in the

atmosphere and the temperatures low so

this is an experiment of same so this is

a small surface two centimeter by two

centimeter so if you see here in this

video we are having avoid wire mesh

which had structure similar to the cacti

on which the water from the atmosphere

is getting condensed the droplets are

forming the droplets gets bigger they

coalesce together and once droplet

reaches to a certain size usually few

millimeters it gets collected by the

hydrophilic surface kept on the backside

of the vileness and from there water

drops down so this is actually

experiment happening and this is a

published work similarly so this is what

you saw is what it water harvesting

happening at few millimeter scale I’ll

show you in this video these are the

images of micrometer scale even lesser

than the strand of hair usually one drop

it’s something even lesser than 50

micrometer probably you cannot see with

the naked eye do the small ropes which

gets bigger they coalesce together and

then the transport to the collection the

water collection train using the same

technology we have probably American

units which can give hundred liters 30

liters 400 liters or 2,000 liters of

drinking water a day till now we have

dispensed more than one left litres of

drinking water using the same technology

the same we exhibited to Prime Minister

Modi when he visited IIT Madras and even

during this exhibition we had an

incident when so we were supposed to

make you know demo2 Prime Minister at 11

o clock and just because two security

clearance we were supposed to report at

the venue at 7 o clock so I’m going to

the venue and security suddenly asked me

that you cannot keep you

you cannot go with your vehicle you have

to park your vehicle and walk since then

many was quite distance from the venue

it would it you know it was eight o

clock by the time I reached venue after

making so many requests I initially I

was like you cannot go to the venue your

stall has to be empty after making

certain requests I was allowed and I was

actually escorted by NSG commandos so

for those 10 15 seconds i has the NSE

security which Prime Minister gates

escorting me to the venue so now while

we are doing this this is good but we

always try to have in system which can

be more sustainable the system which we

are using right now are operated on grid

power but we need to have a systems

which can directly run without any in

any form of grid power needed so we are

trying to have system which works with

the materials which can collect at most

the humidity content of the water

content from the atmosphere just without

any additional energy spent and

religious back to in in the water form

when we need during just by exposing it

to the sunlight or any other stimuli any

of the natural energy stimuli so this is

a form this is a schematic shown in the

you know at the molecular scale the same

if we do at the bigger level this would

be something like this we would have a

material which is just getting a cloud

into it and releasing the same cloud in

form of reporter when exposed to

sunlight all very exposed to heat or any

other natural energy stimuli this kind

of system would be very much sustainable

would be green and it would be an ideal

atmospheric water generator to have it

while we are doing this we need to

answer certain questions the

technologies which we are developing for

even purifying the water are these

technologies really sustainable are we

creating the good positive impact on the

nature is these technologies carbon

negative are these technologies really

green because and the tech we need to

come to a technology when we can answer

this question

and say yeah all these questions are

good and we via carbon-

via green we are sustainable and we are

having a good impact on earth

so let’s come together join our hands

and invent it or develop a technologies

which can which provides a clean

drinking water the same way in nature

does because when we were born we were

blessed with the system to provide

drinking water was completely nurtured

the animal and plant life on this earth

let’s join our hands together and make

this world even better place by making

by having good clean drinking water

thank you

[Applause]