Recycling is severely overlooked, but with new ways of helping our environment (and ourselves by default) we’ve found that despite the lack of enthusiasm, there are still many brilliant scientists who are breaking boundaries and trying to help our planet with their innovations. One of these inventions, the Boom Tube Resonator, has revolutionized the drinking water crisis in India by recovering 10,000 litres of drinking water by recycling sewage daily. Sounds impossible, but Dr. Rajah Vijay Kumar of Bangalore has managed to recover water fit for drinking and also give a high-value compost as a byproduct, definitely killing two birds with one stone. It also uses no chemicals or micro-organisms. In a country where many have little access to potable water, this move will prove to be very beneficial to our water crisis.

The project has been so successful that according to the Times of India, Kumar’s team is already receiving queries from places like Doha and Oman to recover 3 lakh litres per day, and from Malayasia to obtain 10 lakhs. “Singapore is interested in a larger scale project,” he adds to Times of India. Until recently, recovering water from sewage was very difficult, but as we are a nation façing one of the worst drinking water crises, we may need to make optimum use of this project if we want to sustain ourselves. According to the Logical Indian, India’s ground water table is depleting and the surface water is also becoming undrinkable due to contamination. Our sewage contains excreta, urine, soaps and detergents today, and while most is dissolved the rest stay suspended and the very fine particles remain in motion with a negative electrostatic charge that causes them to repel one another. If this charge is nuetralised the particles then collide and combine. The Boom Tube Resonator uses a high-intensity wave to apply this principle, which is how the sewage water becomes potable again.
According to Hocal Wire, India consumes 693 billion cubic metres of water a year, which will probably increase to 942 billion cubic metres by 2025 and 1,422 billion cubic metres by 2050. The tragedy is that our water is rare considered reusable; and the idea of making sewage turn back to clean water was something unheard of. India discharges 38,400 million cubic metres of sewage annually, more than enough for the country if this is recovered.

Feature Image Courtesy of India Times

Words: Divija Mohan