Bharat Rakshak

"The technology we have today is nearly a hundred years old," says Eric Kozubal, a senior engineer at NREL. Kozubal and colleagues have come up with an air conditioner that combines evaporative cooling with a water-absorbing material to provide cool, dry air while using up to 90 percent less energy. The desiccant-enhanced evaporative, or DEVap, air conditioner is meant to addresses the old complaint, "It's not the heat; it's the humidity," more efficiently.

We waste too much of waste,” says Sampatth. “In India, 300 grams of waste is generated per capita per day. That comes to about 40 million tonnes per year.

Of this, about 5 per cent is plastic and rubber. Between 1.2 million to 1.5 million of this plastic and rubber goes to landfills or lies scattered on the streets.” Sampatth reckons that from this 1.2 to 1.5 million tonnes of waste, waste management companies can generate about six lakh tonnes of diesel per year, which can be used to run a truck for six crore km.That’s just one of the alluring possibilities in India’s mounting landfills.

Companies are tapping into more waste for business. Sampatth says his company is building a full-fledged plant “about which we will make an announcement in about two weeks in Hyderabad.” He adds, “If you set up 500 such units, it will mean about 500 new entrepreneurs, employing about 500-1,000 engineers between them.”

Organic waste is a much bigger business proposition – it constitutes 35 per cent of all garbage generated in India. Water management, construction waste and debris (30 to 40 per cent) and hazardous waste, including bio-medical waste, too, call for professional management.

“Then there is huge scope for recycling of batteries, tubelights and CFLs, which requires skilled professionals,” says Sampatth. “There is a lot of potential in this field, especially in a developing country,” says Sahu.

A lot of waste management work is being done by private and non-governmental organisations. There has been some move in government set-ups towards professional garbage management. For example, through a public-private partnership, Mysore City Corporation is reportedly planning a unit to convert discarded plastic into crude oil with diesel, kerosene, wax and perfume as by-products.

Ecosense, involved in R&D of solutions using biotechnology, sells products including those that hasten the conversion of biodegradable waste into compost, without producing methane, a greenhouse gas. “With carbon credits, the profitability and viability of these (waste management) projects has turned around.”

Tata Power, India's largest private sector power company, is considering several low-cost solutions to the severe power shortage experienced across the country.

The company is set to test a 2 kwh (kilowatt per hour) micro wind turbine that is one of the smallest in the world.

A 60 watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours (kwh) of electricity and the wind turbine will have the capacity to power a small home for the entire day. To top it, the turbine can be mounted on rooftops.

If that doesn't sound innovative enough, how about generating power from rice husk as fuel?

Tata Power will install a 250 kw power generation system that will run on rice husk at the Tata hydro power plant near Karjat in Maharashtra. The company hopes to get this pilot project up and running by the end of the year.

Indian scientists are trying out a new climate model to get monsoon forecasts right. If they can get it to work, expect it to rain when they say it will

For the villagers of Tamkuha, a dusty hamlet in rural Bihar, Gyanesh Pandey is the modern day alchemist who transformed piles of discarded rice husk to light up their lives.

Today, every household in Tamkuha has been literally lifted out of darkness with an uninterrupted, self-sufficient power supply, which many towns and cities in India still have not been able to achieve even 60 years after Independence.

Tamkuha, however, is not alone in this matter. Around 50,000 villagers in 120 villages across Bihar and 3 villages in Uttar Pradesh have been benefited by these 'green' power plants.
For villagers, this cheap and eco-friendly model of generating electricity is a miracle that has transformed their lives. No wonder Gyanesh Pandey, the 33-year-old Non-Resident Indian has won the hearts of many poor villagers. "Aap Bhagwan ho (you are God!)!" said a poor villager to Gyanesh Pandey when he first saw his house hit up.

He teamed up with his friends Ratnesh Yadav, Manoj Sinha and Charles W Ransler to set up Husk Power Systems, three years ago. Gyanesh, Ratnesh and Manoj had borne the burnt of the power crisis and many problems while growing up and studying in rural Bihar.

Their idea was simple: to provide power to villagers who depended on agriculture as their main occupation in a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly manner. After six years of research and experiments, the team decided that the most feasible way would be making electricity from rice husk.

But today, HPS owns and operates 40 mini-power plants (35-100 kw) across Bihar. Through this unique green technology, villages get uninterrupted power for up to 6-12 hours by setting up [b]a plant, which burns rice husk to generate gas to run generators

Providing electricity to villages across India is just the beginning of Gyanesh's ambitious plan to transform rural India. The company has already taken up the initiative to educate 200 children from Tumkuha.

An optimistic and determined Gyanesh is chalking out a grand vision to build an integrated network to upgrade health, education and energy needs of India's poorest people. He shares the excitement, the trials and tribulations of bringing light in the lives of hundreds of poor people.

Arsenic is one of the most carcinogenic elements known and is toxic above 10 ppb. Drinking water contaminated with the element is a dangerous everyday reality for many people across the world and it can lead to chronic illness and death. The arsenic mainly comes from naturally occurring arsenic-rich rocks through which the water has filtered but it may occur in areas where arsenic is mined as well. Scientists also suspect that changes in agricultural practices, such as using groundwater wells for irrigation rather than surface water sources like rivers and ponds, may also be to blame.