After several weeks of relentless rain and one of the worst floods to hit in more than a century, people in Kerala have already initiated the task of clearing out days of sludge and water from their homes.
Apart from cleaning the wells, clearing out the e-waste, the residents are now faced with severe drinking water crisis due to contamination of wells and damaged pumping stations in flood-hit areas.
Taking the situation in hand, a team of ten students led by Anto P. Biju & Thomas Cyriac studying in St. Joseph’s College of Engineering & Technology, Palai, under the guidance of Indian Institute of Minerals and Material Technology (IMMT), Bhubaneswar and Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology (CIPET) have come up with a low-cost, low-maintenance, easy-to-use organic water purifier .
The Organic water filter helps cleanse impure water up to the capacity of 30 liters within a few hours and makes it safe for drinking according to the BIS standards.
“As compared to other filters which are mostly synthetic in nature, our water purifier is purely organic and the water also gets added with minerals after the purification which is good for the immune system,” says Anto P. Biju, one of the Co-founders of Lamaara Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the company behind introducing the water purifier in Kerala.
A number of water purifiers were donated to several relief camps and few schools in and around Kottayam district. The team is also trying possible ways to deliver these filters to other flood-affected areas in the state.
“Right now we have about 200 units of water filters and we would like to donate them to various relief camps and areas where there is a severe scarcity of drinking water”, adds Anto.
Team Lamaara carried out nearly two years of research and market surveys to identify scarcity of potable water as the major issue. Initially, various prototypes were developed and several lab tests were conducted before finally coming up with a low-cost, low-maintenance, but highly effective water filter.
“The cost of one filter is Rs 1000, but we are giving it as a donation. We require an additional fund of about Rs. 2,30,000 in order to supply these water filters to the affected flood victims in Kerala. For this we have already started the funding process”, says Anto.
The organic water filter is an indigenous technology which can convert water from ground and surface sources, such as tube wells, dug wells, rivers, and ponds safe to drink.
This water filter eliminates excess iron, harmful microorganisms from the impure water.
Filtering Process
The water flows through the pores by water pressure over the organic disc which is made of organic materials with the pores acting as micro-reservoirs.
The filtered water one gets is free from bad odor, color, and turbidity. The filter effectively strips water of microorganisms, soluble iron, and certain heavy metals.
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