Design of a water storage and purification system for rural India

The aim of the project was to design and develop a storage type water purification system for rural India by considering cost, usability and hygiene. Water is one of the basic necessities for our survival like air and food. Two thirds of human body weight is made up of water and water is required for each and every cell and organ for its proper functioning. At present purifiers help to deliver pure water which is 100 percent free from impurities, but in rural areas lack of knowledge, affordability and usability issues have impacted the effective usage of purifiers. In this project an attempt is made to resolve the issues of purifier through product design so that an efficient and affordable purifier is developed for use by the rural people. Even though water covers 70 percent of the earth its availability for drinking is only 1 percent, therefore knowing the source of water is important.

In this project, research has been conducted around rural areas of Bengaluru, by asking several questions to understand the requirements of the rural people and also during the research some simple traditional purification technologies adopted were studied. Later a market study was done to understand the present day water purifiers and mainly product like TATA Swach and Pure IT compact were measured by considering the needs of the rural people. Finally TATA Swach was considered as the bench mark product for concept generation. Five concepts were developed by considering Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Product Design Specification (PDS) and finally one concept was selected by weighted ranking method. This selected product was further modified for improvements.

The final design has been modelled using acrylic incorporating a TATA Swach standard bulb along with the traditional method of purification. The volume of the product was also a very important consideration while designing the final concept. User validation was carried out and the results were positive and satisfactory.