Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Creating drinkable water using Saline/Ocean/Sea water

India is a country with less drinkable water and the lazy, uncommitted govt, municipal and govt official makes it worse.

Lately, i was reading an article on timesofindia.com, which says
No right to be in office if you can't solve water crisis: SC to govt.

And I think its right. If a govt cant fulfill the basic rights of a citizen it has no business to be in power.

Anyhow, I can write pages and pages on this. My objective to write this article is; How easily we can convert the abundant saline water to drinkable water. Many Indian states have unlimited access to ocean water from Gujrat in the west till West Bengal in the east. I live in Rajasthan and I guess we can pump the water from ocean via Gujrat. Narendra Modi will be more than happy to allow that.

So there are many ways of converting saline water to portable or drinking water. Here are some:

1.
Distilation: If we remember the simple experiment that we did in our 9-10 th science lab. Boiling salt water with emit vapors and that these vapors are converted into water. This water is 100% drinkable. The steam leaves behind the impurities and salt. This is the general idea.

a. We can pump water directly from ocean/sea. using simple filter we can filter out the dirt, impurities, solid waste like plastic, paper etc. The filter can be of simple plastic or
a charcoal-sand filter. We can have multi point filter so that the water does not clogs. Also we need to clean these filter often.


b. The water so pumped is feed into the boilers. The water boils in these large vessels and the vapors can be collect to get the drinkable water. As far as I know, we need not add anything to it like iodine etc.


Of course we need to have multiple arrays of large vessels in order to have continuous water supply.


isn't that simple ?

2. Reverse Osmosis: This method is a little complex one. A special kind of membrane know as emipermeable membranes is used. This a special type of filter that allow water molecules to pass but not other large molecules likes the molecules and ions (e.g. sodium and chloride ions in salt water).This company Water Makers is specialist in making drinkable water using ocean water by Reverse Osmosis method. Water Makers is a US based company, but I am sure we have many Indian companies doing the same thing.



Now we have another challenge: How to get the power or electricity for doing all this.


Hopefully and believe me this can be done using renewable energy. Yes there are many choices to choice from.



1.
Wave powered machines: We can harness the waves and can create turbines generating electricity.

2. Since these project are most likes to be present near the coastal region, the wind power is abundant. You guessed right; we can have wind mills that produce electricity.

3. Solar power: Again a IQ. Since these project will be generally used in the dry areas, there should be abundant sunshine. This is good for solar panels.

We can employ one or a combination of these techniques.

In this way we will not ONLY get drinkable water but the Green way. So let me call this one Green Water.


A step forward: We can even use waste water from kitchen, urine water etc. I know this will not sound OK for many people. But just in case .....

Let me finish this with a simple note.


I like many Indian are very passionate about India. I really want to bring IT and technology to the common man living in a remote village of India. There is no use of modernization if we can't improve the living condition of the poor and real India.

I want to do it. If you are reading this and want to make a difference, do let me know.



References:

1. http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-02/983131856.Ot.r.html

2. http://www.watermakers.com

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis

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