Real life rainmaker! Mumbai teen creates water from air

Two years ago while volunteering with the Indian Red Cross Society Shubh Agarwal 17 got the chance to visit Pimpri village near Pune When a water tanker arrived the villagers ran behind it with buckets I learnt that the tanker came to the village once a week and sometimes once in 10 days says the Vile Parle resident who was 15 then and studying in Std X at RIMS International SchoolVolunteers help 17yearold Shubh Agarwal transport his invention Aquarius The Rainmaker to Wada a town about three hours from Mumbai The device is installed at Agarwalrsquos factory plot in Wada Pics Pradeep DhivarThe next year he moved to The International School Bangalore but the plight of the villagers stayed with him and inspired him to design Aquarius ndash The RainmakerAlso readMumbai No need of water cut this summer says BMCThe towering device that cost Rs 22000 to put together is currently installed at Agarwals fathers factory plot in Wada a town three hours from Mumbai It works by harnessing the humidity in the air and converting it into water droplets At any moment the atmosphere contains 375 million billion gallons of water in the form of invisible vapour If we are able to extract even a fraction of it the worlds water crisis could be addressed says the teenager throwing up a number of stats from a research paper he wrote this JanuaryAlso read85 percent water in seven reservoirs says Mumbai civic bodySample this By 2025 an estimated 18 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity with twothirds of the worlds population living in waterstressed regionsThe Aquarius anatomyIt has taken Agarwal two years to perfect the model under the mentorship of Dr Soumya Sri Bhattacharya who helped him with technical details including guidance on materials to use Initially I used only two solar panels but later I added two more so the device works through the night as well Agarwal tells midday pointing to the 6V solar panels attached to a 12feetlong copper pipeAlso readMumbai Metro work causes water pipeline burst near BorivliLocals help install the device at Shubh Agarwalrsquos inset factory plot in Wada a town three hours from Mumbai Pics Pradeep DhivarThe panels are connected to a rechargeable battery that helps power a CPU fan fitted at the mouth of the 16gauge pipe which stands erect at the installation site half of it buried in a sevenandahalf feet deep pit in the ground When the humid air contacts the metal it condenses to form water droplets The temperature under the ground is 1012 degrees lower than in the air above Also copper has a relatively higher thermal conductivity than aluminium So it can reach a lower temperature faster explains AgarwalThe remaining air exits through another copper pipe connected to the first one The gravity does its work and droplets are collected in a bucket attached to the copper pipe placed under the ground The water can then be removed using a hand pumpThe crowdfunding routeWHO estimates the per person daily drinking water requirement to be 19 to 2 litres and at present Aquarius can generate 42 litres of water in 24 hours Agarwal says explaining that the device is capable of this providing water for two persons every dayHe also plans to create replicas of the model and install them in villages across Maharashtra starting with Pimpri For that he has launched a R65000 crowdfunding campaign on Kettoorg which is live for another 10 days The funds will also help me further my research and increase the efficiency of the modelYou may also like to readPhotos Its complicated TV stars and their troubled relationships