The water-maker

Four decades after ending a corporate career, S. S. Sivakumar, a former professor of Economics at Madras University, went on to invent a machine that created water, literally, out of thin air. For over a decade, the 69-year-old has been working relentlessly with his firms Akash Ganga International (AGI) and Pure Water Foundation (PWF), towards the cause of sustainability in his hometown Chennai.

He shares his journey along the arduous road that led him to discovering a new invaluable sustainable resource — biosolids. “I took voluntary retirement in 2004 to start AGI as a propriety concern. A nephew of mine, who had a business background, became my general manager and we began to design machines that created pure water from condensed atmospheric moisture,” he says. The machines, based on the heat-exchange principle of physics, can produce 15 to 1,000 litres of water per day, that is pure enough for dialysis since it had no contact with soil and contains no microbacteria.

Sivakumar’s work on AGI eventually meant a broader engagement with issues of environmental sustainability. He began PWF as a trust, to research technologies that could make it easier to get water from air independent of a grid power supply and find an alternative source of power generation. It was found the easiest way to make power is burning methane gas in a gas burning engine or a turbine.

“India has a perennial supply of methane as the rate of production of garbage is faster than the rate of population growth here! Methane is garbage as it rots and sewage as it collects; the possibilities are limitless. We know nothing about sustainability even though we’ve been talking about it for years. Sustainability makes you think like nature. It’s humans who talk about waste. In nature, everything is consumed endlessly. We decided to think in terms of processes that consider all waste as producers of resources. Our proposals were turned down by the municipalities of Thrissur and Kadalur, probably because there was no politician pushing us,” he chuckles. “Anyone who wants to do serious work must be like an ant. No matter how much you step on ants, they keep coming and coming.”

The PWF looked for sources of methane and eventually got in touch with the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewage Board in 2011. Their plants had a surprisingly beneficial sludge, a by-product of sewage treatment, now known as biosolids.

“The efficient way of treating sewage is introducing it to anaerobic bacteria that convert it to clean water, methane gas and sludge, world’s richest fertilizer; its nitrogen content is seven times that of cow dung, containing natural phosphorus and potash.”

AGI and PWF are focussed on being part of a small international group of people working with biosolids as a means to the next organic revolution. “We’ve made value added products from biosolids like a rich putty mix, which requires no fertilizer or soil. And planning to set up a company Biosolids India. The Pure Water Foundation is also making three new prototypes of Akash Ganga that depends on solar thermal energy.”