BENGALURU, 9 MAY

At a time when Bengalureans are grappling with water crisis, a City-based firm has been supplying drinking water bottles to the hospitality industry by extracting water from the air. 

Uravu Labs, a startup, started extracting water from the air to generate awareness about groundwater exploitation and climate change and also to shift focus towards sustainable solutions and technology. Inspired by a similar process shown in ‘Star Wars’ movie series, the startup is converting air to water using the process of reverse water evaporation. The machines employed, called Atmospheric Water Generators (AWGs), absorb moisture from air, filter it and condense it to collect the water.

According to a study, air has six times more water than all the rivers combined in the globe, said Swapnil Srivastav, who co-founded Uravu Labs with his friend Venkatesh RY, told Salar News. Every 8-10 days, the water replenishes naturally which makes it even more sustainable. “AWGs are the most reliable source of consumable water as it has zero wastage of water, whereas Reverse Osmosis (RO) units generate 2-3 litres of wastewater to produce one litre of water,” Srivastav said.

The AWG is eco-friendly as it uses solar energy and waste heat from other industries for its working, reducing the dependency on renewable energy. 

Roughly having a height of 6 feet, the AWG can be set up anywhere, where there is a water crisis.  Uravu Labs is planning to tie up with State government to reach out to more people. “To tie up with the government, we must reach a certain production rate. We are currently producing 3,000 litres of water per day and are planning to produce 1.5 to 2 lakh litres of water per day. Only then can we think of producing for a large-scale audience,” Srivastav said. —Salar News