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]