Soon, unit at Dhulagarh to produce water from air

Kolkata: A city-based company is planning to set up a manufacturing unit at Dhulagarh in Howrah for generators capable of producing potable water for households directly from thin air.

"We are planning to set up a manufacturing line in Howrah for household atmospheric water generators. The capacity of the household model will be about 40 litre a day. The investment would be around Rs 30-40 crore," Navkaran Singh Bagga, director of AKVO said. The company said the 40-litre domestic model is likely to be priced between Rs 30,000 and Rs 40,000 per unit.

AKVO already has its manufacturing plant at Dhulagarh from which they are already producing such Atmospheric Water Generators (AWG) for industrial use. "However, our target is to ensure such generators for domestic use and we hope to commence production by February 2018," Bagga said.

According to him, only 60 percent of the water will be ready for consumption by 2030 with India and rest of the world staring at a global crisis, unless we care about our environment. "The hour has come to try and find sustainable solutions to minimise the use of groundwater and develop cost efficient technology to provide clean drinking water for mankind," he said.

Currently, the company is producing industrial size AWGs with capacity ranging from 1,000 litre a day to 5,000 litre a day at the existing plant.

Bagga said the atmospheric water generators have several advantages over the reverse osmosis-based water purifiers, as it operates without any water supply and does not waste it in the process of purification.