New Delhi, April 06: First it was gobar gas ( biogas generated from cow dung) that revolutionised renewable energy in rural India. Now it is the turn to harness urine.
The pee, that raises quite a stink, is going to undergo a sea change thanks to the efforts of a scientist from the Delhi Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT).
Scientists believe that urine smells when it gets oxidised.
The idea is to trap the urine and, with it, the smell.
V. M. Chariar, from IIT’s centre for rural development and technology, has built a waterless urinal, and a system to remove the stench and use urine as a fertiliser.
He has come up with a technology called Zerodor which prevents urine from coming in contact with air. He has already patented the technology.
“ We are getting requests from South Africa and the US for our design,” Chariar said.
Three to 15 litres of water is used on a single flush. Chariar believes around 50,000 to one lakh litres of water can be saved in a year by one waterless urinal.
There are plans to install 1,000 such waterless urinals across Delhi. Fifty are already in use while their number will increase to 250 in another 10 days, said a Municipal Corporation of Delhi ( MCD) official.
The Delhi government has floated a tender for maintaining the 1,000 urinals. Each urinal will be set up at a cost of Rs 4 lakh. In the long run, all water consuming urinals could be replaced by waterless ones, the official added.
“ We are exploring how it ( urine) can be best used. A scientist from the University of California has proposed to make electricity out of urine,” the official said.
Two waterless urinal kiosks are in operation at IIT Delhi.
Urine from them is being harvested.
In one, urine is discharged directly into a horticultural bed on the campus, while urine from the other is used on a fiveacre plantation.
Chariar, along with a Swiss institute, has also perfected a technology to extract a fertiliser — magnesium ammonium phosphate, or struvite — from urine.
He has put up a reactor for the purpose on the IIT campus.
He now plans to work with the Delhi Parks and Gardens Society and the MCD to use the technology.
–Agencies