Saaf Jal
Saaf Jal- a water filter made from food waste that has the potential to provide Indian villages with clean and safe water. It can remove heavy metals and other contaminants.
We are trying to solve the contamination of drinking water due to industrial effluents. Despite of availability of high-tech water filters in the market, every 2 minutes a child dies due to water-related diseases, and staggering 771 million people lack access to safe water.
CORE PROBLEMS
- Most of the filters are available in a higher price range and are not affordable.
- Moreover, there is a gap between the manufacturer of water filters and the victim of this issue. Once a water filtration plant is set up, there are no regular quality checks and the plants are dysfunctional.
GOALS
- We decided to make a filter that could be manufactured by anyone, anywhere with the simplest materials available. Raw materials for our filter are food waste. Particularly, we used banana peel, corn cob, eggshell, and coconut shell.
- Filter should be able to purify heavy metals, organic contaminants, and inorganic contaminants from contaminated water.
HOW DID WE IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM?
The idea to start this project came from a video by South China Morning Post. It was about Gangnauli- a village with 7,500 people in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Its source of water was contaminated by industrial effluents. Not a single family is healthy. At least one person is sick in every household. That's when Sureka( Founder) researched more on this problem and found that this problem prevails all over India.
What is it?
Saaf Jal is a self assembly water filter made from food waste that can remove various contaminants from contaminated drinking water. It has no synthetic chemicals and doesn't use any fancy equipment for manufacturing.
What processes and technology does it use?
Our filter use biosorption. Adsorption is the adhesion of atoms, ions, or molecules from a gas, liquid, or dissolved solid to a surface. This process creates a film of the adsorbate on the surface of the adsorbent. Biosorption is the same process using certain types of biomasses which has the ability to bind and concentrate metals. The Biosorption technique has been established to be the most effective and economical method owing to its high efficiency and inexpensive.
Activated carbon was the widely used adsorbent in wastewater treatment applications, particularly for heavy metal removal; unfortunately, activated carbon remains expensive and requires complicated procedures to improve its removal performance for inorganic matters. Therefore, this situation makes it no longer attractive to be widely used because of cost inefficiency. Due to those problems, we have come up with alternative adsorbents to replace the costly activated carbon. We made our filter efficient by combing these low-cost adsorbents (Banana peel, Corn cob, Coconut shell).
Target Audience:
Our target audience are the villagers of Gangnauli in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. We will expand our target place to all Indian villages after successful implementation of Saaf Jal in Gangnauli.
Who are they, and in what ways are they currently underserved?
Some 7000 people live in Gangnauli. Their water source is contaminated due to an industry nearby. The contaminants have seeped into their ground water as well. They don't have access to clean water. Despite winning a court ruling in relation to the problem, the villagers say the local government has done nothing to help them. Many NGO's have lend their hands to help. They offer to build RO filters. Sadly, these RO's aren't maintained properly and is dysfunctional.
How will the solution address their needs?
Our solution focuses on this problem specifically. We will train the villagers such that they can maintain the filter's quality. Villagers once trained can easily build the filter. It is easy to do so because the filter uses adsorbents that are readily available in a village; food waste(Banana peel, Corn cob, Coconut shell and Egg shell) . All these were considered while choosing the adsorbent for the filter.
Our team consists of eminent high school students. Each of us have profound interest for STEM, problem solving and critical thinking. We all fight the battle of high standards. All of the team members are from India. Though they are located in different parts of the world, they understand the target audience.
We have done extensive research on the potential users. We have contacted few of the villagers to understand the problem in detail. Most of our team members root their origin to a village in India. So they know the needs and environment in which our filter will be implemented.
- Other: Addressing an unmet social, environmental, or economic need not covered in the four dimensions above.
- Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea.
There are no other filters in the market that can be manufactured in the place of need itself. Our filter can be manufactured in the place of need. It is the most appropriate solution for the problem. If the villagers are trained properly, they can not only make filters for their villages also for villages near by and train more villagers. This creates a positive chain effect. It has the potential to provide millions and millions of people with clean and safe drinking water.
IMPACT GOALS
- Conduct camps to train the villagers of Gangnauli for making the filter
- Start a small manufacturing hub in Gangnauli
- Implement the filter in all the handpumps of Gangnauli
- Provide at least 50 homes with stationary Saaf Jal water filter
Our filter use biosorption. Adsorption is the adhesion of atoms, ions, or molecules from a gas, liquid, or dissolved solid to a surface. This process creates a film of the adsorbate on the surface of the adsorbent. Biosorption is the same process using certain types of biomasses which has the ability to bind and concentrate metals. The Biosorption technique has been established to be the most effective and economical method owing to its high efficiency and inexpensive.
Activated carbon was the widely used adsorbent in wastewater treatment applications, particularly for heavy metal removal; unfortunately, activated carbon remains expensive and requires complicated procedures to improve its removal performance for inorganic matters. Therefore, this situation makes it no longer attractive to be widely used because of cost inefficiency. Due to those problems, we have come up with alternative adsorbents to replace the costly activated carbon. We made our filter efficient by combing these low-cost adsorbents (Banana peel, Corn cob, Coconut shell).
- Ancestral Technology & Practices
Saaf Jal is not yet implemented. It is in the stage of lab testing and further research and development. We expect to solve at least 7,500 by end of this year or start of next year. If implemented successfully in Gangnauli, it will be easily expanded to near by villages.
We need more help with testing the filter and its capacity. We are trying to add an compartment right after the filter that acts as an indicator. It will indicate once the filter has lost its capacity. We need help in research with this modifications.
We have requested NGO's in India to partner with us. Communications are in the process. We don't have the conformation still.
We provide them with training on how to source the raw materials and how to manufacture the filter. We will provide the outer body of the filter mostly or train them to source it from local manufacturers. Target audience have to start a small fund to implement Saaf Jal in their villages.
We will be dependent on sustained funding. Further on, we might sell our filter in a modified manner. We might sell some custom merch as well.