Water Resource Management in India

Good luck and best wishes with your project.

I understand some of the challenges that you have with intermittant water in the pipelines over there. It is good to see some positive work to help the situation instead of waiting for others to forge ahead.

Level sensors are a good start.

Monitoring for leaks in the customer systems is also highly beneficial so that what water you are able to obtain gets directed to its intended use rather than leaking to the ground.

I wish you all well.

Thanks for a very positive comment.

Yes, we have this problem of water coming only for 30 minutes to 60 minutes in a day and something they pump water at different times and there is no way to track all this. For this reason we have placed a sensor for water which looks at the water arrival time and in about 30 minutes fills 1100L two overhead tanks. Sometime water in the pipe line released at night and sometime in the early morning. Keeping track of water was a hell. Now that sensor looks after at the water, we had no problems for sometime and we all sleep very well now.

Yes, we had some problem of tap leakage in our house as our house cleaner lady often used to forget to close the tap and over a day the entire 1100L tank used to become empty with no water to flush the toilet and no water to the RO water filer. This caused hell. Now I have two tanks 1100L each and one full tank remains secured all the time. I think we can use intelligent software to monitor water leakage and proper water usage by data recording and analyzing and if there is no genuine use then some kind of warning and protection mechanism to come into action.

We have a community worship place nearby and it has an overhead water tank for people to wash. We have gifted one automatic water level monitoring and water tank filling system there and it is very convenient for people now as it works unattended.

Normally looking at water level, one gets an idea of when to stop wasting water when tank has limited water. Right now three levels of level indicators are giving useful but limited information and this part of the information sure is to be enhanced. We also have to make gadgets for stopping water flow when tap is not in use by any person. Indian homes do not have airport and hotel like sensor activated automated flush tanks. I think we have to make them and also at affordable cost.

Millions of houses require this hardware so we have a plan to go on a big way to help communities and homes involving lots of work force. It is our trial time right now and soon we will be ready for larger scale levels. Under the plan, large number of people need to be trained in assembling and installing the units. As we are non-profit organization, there is no share capital or distribution of financial gain. Project is running on our promotional fund with minimum sustainable gain. We will prefer to transfer manufacturing knowledge to other small scale units to produce these for their financial gain. Until then we will continue doing work ourselves.

Homes in India use 500L to 2000L water and small schools use 10000L to 50000L water. We will also look into water management for small gardens and small green houses.

In our spoilt western society we also have trouble with some taps being left on by some careless individuals.

Many public locations (Like sports fields and public utilities) have "spring loaded" taps that self close after a few seconds. Allows enough time to wet hands to wash, but ensures no wastage.

I am certain that similar is already made in India. (The difficulty is that if you need to fill a bucket or similar then you have to continue to hold the tap open.)

I am reliant on rainfall for my home water (We live 12km beyond the end of the pipes) and my first step was to make sure that we had two independant tanks so that if ever something happened to one the oter was available as standby. It takes less than 1 minute to switch the supply tanks.

I have a humble friend who will be visiting Gwalior in the near future and I might suggest him to visit you if he has time. (He is not a technical person, but comes from that region and is returning for an upcoming wedding of a younger relative of his.)

When I was last in India, there were reall issues with water availability. The pumps were "switched on" for a few hours per day, but at the same time the electricity was also being rationed. The timing of power availability and pumps being "on" was sometimes not co-ordinated, meaning that whole communities had no water for many days.

Having experienced that event helps me to understand some of the challenges that you face.

Many good ideas are coming up. I greatly appreciate these. We have already summer in North India and people use water evaporation based coolers here. water evaporates at rapid rate as heat picks up and water runs out easily in the water cooler tanks. We developed small 12V valve and float operated water filling system to take care of water coolers to let them be operated unattended at day and nights. These coolers generate a lot of humidity and in dry atmosphere it is very nice feeling right now perhaps up to June end. It will start raining heavily thereafter and these coolers won't work.

I am planning timer based water flow control valves.

Modern taps are also available that introduce air bubbles into the flowing water stream. These arrangements are ideal for hand-wash basins, as wetting takes place with significantly lower water consumption compared to taps that do not introduce air bubbles. These might be worth investigating as well, perhaps?

PWSlack,

Your point is well taken. Anything and everything that can reduce water consumption is worth using. Something that is useful on aircraft and trains can also be tried for domestic use also, particularly where water crises is at very critical level. Chennai city has very big problem.

I think Singapore gets water from Malaysia as their own river is too small.

Good luck.

We, in the USA can't grasp the concept of empty pipes.

30 minutes to 60 minute water released per day. Fill and use limited water in many cities. Our population is many fold and resources very limited and clean drinking water very limited. In some cities water comes ones in 2 days. Country has sea on three sides but we do not use sea water. If you pull the ground water in coastal area then salty sea water will creep into ground water due to pressure difference.

There is water crises all over here.

Neat, why blue LED's? why not green or red? Blue still have a lower lifetime than Green LED's as far as i know (or is it a cultural thing?)

We need something that can outshine in daylight as many such systems are installed where there is a lot of daylight. Blue perhaps was an idea of engineer with respect to water. I prefer Red, Yellow and Green in three colors for three levels using high brightness LEDs of about 20 MCD. We have Red & Green Color flipping LED when water lifting pump is ON.

In new systems LED Bars to be used. We are also planning wireless sensors and wireless display of water levels away from water tank and within 100m / 300m / 1km from water storage tank. Wireless water level sensors not to use any external electricity of mains power and these have to work on energy harvesting miniature solar panel and small rechargeable battery. We are right now working on various methods for energy harvesting methods such that sensor can work without external power.

Small storage and level control systems are the correct way to control such intermittent supplies and I applaud your efforts. Although India may be drier than Canada, we still have our areas where ample water is hard to get or ample potable water is hard to get. The storage tanks are also used where individual well supplies could interfere with each other during peak demands. We have used ultrasonic level (USL) control systems and could get instantaneous feedback on levels. These USL controllers were good at opening and closing valves to prevent overfilling and to activate flow. Good luck.

Ultrasonic level sensors are good but they are very expensive about US$300 to US$500 which is very high. Our aim is to have float sensor of cost < US$100 or Water capacitance sensor < $200. There is clear advantage of Ultrasonic sensor being non-contact type.

We find that float sensors of just two level can fit cheapest designs and Capacitance sensors to be used for continuous level monitoring with high resolution like ultrasonic sensors. Problem with capacitance sensor is with hard solid rods of Stainless steel used in the design are not easy to transport and they also come in contact of water which may have some leakage current from pump motors will also enter the signal electronics of the sensor. This is to be avoided and sensor to be fully isolated. This work is yet to be completed for isolating the sensor. PTFE coating on sensor can help but it is difficult to have coating on inner surface of the sensor. This will also increase the cost of the sensor. Float type sensors are already isolated type and never come in direct contact with water.

Right now our plan is to make 1.5m long capacitive sensors as our water tanks are less than 1.5m in depth and for larger depth tanks our plan is for 3m or 18ft plus length. We use 10mm OD stainless steel tube to make these sensors and our design is to be patented being unique and cost effective. Having fixed length sensors, some amount of flexibility is lost.

Our aim is to have two wire 4-20mA modulated frequency signal or direct ASCII formatted data from sensor.

One more design we are working is using pressure sensors similar to Global water water level sensors and these can be used in wells and reservoirs and swimming pool and other water storage tanks and ponds.

We had a meeting with Department of Science and Technology Government of India and they are keen in detection of biological contamination in water and hence, we will also take up new sensor development line for water quality measurement and control. As this is not within the scope of this discussion, we can talk about it elsewhere.

If anyone of you want to make use of this technology then participate in the discussion and write down your application details to be discussed publicly to let others also contribute in it.

Nice job Shyam!!!

It's the simple solutions that are going to win the day.

I don't know how your government works, but here in the US, our political leaders apply expensive, complicated solutions, (that don't work), to simple problems. One upside; our debt clock is spinning so fast, that we may be able to generate electricity from it.

Hi Shyam, Nice hear something from you after long time. Congratulations for your water saving project. We in India are always facing water scarcity even though we have great rivers like Ganges, Yamuna, Brahmaputra etc. Unfortunately there is criminal wastage of water in cities and small towns. Today Marathwada District in Maharashtra is going through very bad draught. Your project will defiantly help in conservation of scare water resource.

suresh sharma:
As our population doubles, triples and need for water increases, this problem will become very serious one. We have limited good quality water and rich wasting most of it leaving little or none for poor deprived. We also have no enough good drinking water at the small village level even though people may have TV, Mobile and Bikes easily. Open wells and infected water or even poisonous water is daily used by poor. 50% of India sure are suffering and that is huge population of the world. Government wants someone to do it for them for which they may give peanuts. People themselves must find way to survive as Darwin predicted. Small number of people like me are just pawn in the game doing their small bit of whatever feasible due to no great resources on hand. However, that is not very important thing to talk about here. What is most important thing is the challenge of technology and rather doing it in a very cheap way to produce high technology products and take it to the people who can't think of paying anything. Right now making dirty water gives money to the Government so that is the choice between industry and the Government. People, are not money source.
There are about 638,365 plus villages in India and 1,220,800,359 people counted last time in census. I want to touch 10000 villages in my life if that is feasible needing about few thousands dollars worth technology products for each villages. This requires a fortune which I do not have but let me keep doing as much I have and I can do.
New development is SS316/L tube based water capacitor continuous water level sensors. I have made 500 numbers new signal transmitters for these sensors to send data over a distance of 500-m either on cable or wireless to manage the information. Normally water tank and pump house are within this range.
Next development now planned is to have cheap water purification system for villages. I am taking help of a friend for this work and only have to find money to compensate him.
There is no difference between agriculture water and drinking water for villages. If they pump more to the farm then they have less for homes. Limited places have highly contaminated industrial waste loaded river water. I think trapping rain water by harvesting is a much better idea. Promoting all related industries is also a very good idea.
Suggest something if you have some idea. I have seen www.water4.org some Video and they are heart touching. All American friends must see these and get involve even if you do it for fun. I am willing to arrange some expeditions for you to come and see India if you wish to your bit hear if you think you have some great knowledge related to acute water shortage solution help.
Our technology will also be made available to the rest of the world irrespective of the place people belong to. Get in touch. Right now I am not asking for any financial help from anyone including Government. Perhaps I can pull on from money I get from research technology. It is not going to be easy but it is OK.

Dear Mr.Shyam,

Sorry for replying you late as I was out of town. I appreciate your efforts in conserving water resources. My comments are:-

1. Population control in whole country.

2. Harvesting of rain water in big cities. In Mumbai alone millions of liters rain water goes back in the sea through strom water drains.

3. Avoiding wastage of water for gardening, Car washing, etc.

4. Creating awareness of water as scare commodity to public in general.

There can be many more suggestions in this regards, hope our new generations will understand the problem which can create havoc in next 20/30 years.

Dear suresh sharma:

I think India population will grow four folds before we realize what went wrong or or world get really badly feared of our population. I do not know who is managing India and where from Idea are coming from but nothing seems to be working here. We keep hearing scam after scam and then wait for next scam of scams. Like others I am also insensitive to many things now as have to do something. I get newspaper but I hardly look at it.

Water resource management of course is very bad in India. I have seen how gutter water you can see at Chennai railway station was bought (by paying TN State Government) and purified by Madras Refinery Limited and made excellent drinking water. If MRF can do it then rest of the country can do it if they have will. I think MRF had excellent management. I visited them some 20 years ago. They were also manufacturing bio-fertilizer and their main business is Petroleum Refinery and Petroleum side products manufacturing.

I have proposed to Government of India that I can manufacture a machine to purify the water for this entire city of Gwalior and this machine can be given to Government for its job for which Government need to fund it. I told them that I want to retain IP rights of the technology. They told me that I need to put my own money for that. I already hold knowledge and I want to work for free for Government and want to Give them this complete machine for which they only have to pay the actual cost but they wanted me to pay part of it. Isn't it funny?

I will prefer to remain non profit but I am not stupid enough to finance the Government which is already financed by many fold multiple taxes.

Let us come back to the development we are discussing. Our Capacitive sensors going to be ready very soon. I have also designed elegant bar-graph display for it such that people can keep it in their general sitting room and can have a good look if they are managing water properly or not. I may sell some of these sensors to generate fund for further research.

Water harvesting is an excellent idea and it is to be done everywhere and not just in cities. It should become a way of living for each of us here. I will like to record the effect of water harvesting and will like to put sensor data recorders at many places. Information alone directs us for finding solution.

I have been thinking for a couple days about your level sensor, so today I made one using a few items I had lying around in my workshop. It took me 14 minutes to prepare all the wires and assemble (excluding finding all the components and tools) but I estimate that splitting the tasks among several workers and jigging the job correctly a complete sensor could be made in 6-8 man minutes. The sensor comprises ten latching type reed switches (I only had 3 available so I used 1 watt resistors that are about the same size to simulate the others), mounted in a vertical plastic tube with an external annular magnet attached to a float that will rise and lower with the water level. A latching (E type) reed switch closes as the magnet passes in one direction (rising water level) and remains closed until the magnet passes in the opposite direction (falling water level). The switches are wired in series with a tap off to individual segments of the LED display after each switch contact. The setting and resetting of the reed switches is independent of the applied power, so the sensor will continue to track the water level if power is lost and shows the correct level when power is restored. I would recommend that each cable core be colour-coded to ease assembly with fewer crossed wiring errors (I used all the same colour insulation, that is why it took me so long). I terminated the top in a 12 pin round plug that fitted neatly to the end of my 12mm tube. I did not have the correct end stop so my magnet falls off the end and my float is a bit of pipe insulation foam, but this was only a test to see what time it would take and how much it would cost. I also did not seal with mastic but with just a cork in the end it stayed watertight long enough to test it in a butt of water.

Reed switches are enclosed in evacuated glass envelopes and their seals are often damaged by heat generated when soldering their terminals. Using crimped multi-pole socket inserts avoids this problem while being more reliable. Crimping is also an easier technique for semi-skilled workers to master than soldering, and does not require consumables or fume extraction.

To produce 1m long level sensors how I did it today would cost less than £10 (830INR) based on a batch of 100 sensors. Add about 160INR for each additional metre. Prices are based on UK so you may source cheaper locally and there would be further savings in bulk buying.

Capital costs:- Workbench with a jig to position the sensors and cut the wires to length (If this is constructed on a ten node pantograph, different lengths of sensor can be made on the same jig.), wire cutters, wire strippers, crimping tools, saw to cut plastic tubing to length, special purpose draw tool (stiff wire with hook on the end) to pull assembled switches into the tube, grips to tighten the plug housing.

Bought in components to complete a 1m long sensor:- 1m length 10mm O/D 2mm wall plastic tube, 1 12 way multi-pole plug, 10 reed switches, 1 annular magnet, 1 annular float, 1 end cap, 11 male & 20 female multi-pole plug inserts, 6.5m .05mm² single core cable (comprising various lengths with different colour insulation), mastic to seal assembly. For production quantities, it might be cheaper to machine the float and end cap out of solid plastic and this would provide work for one lathe and operator.

I hope that the drawing is self explanatory. The wire insulation is stripped by 6mm at each end and also 6mm at 80mm from the lower end. Three crimps are fitted to each wire numbered 2-10. A male crimp (A) at the top to insert into the plug, a female crimp (B) 80mm from the end with the socket facing the plug and a female crimp (C) at the end facing away from the plug. Nine wires are made up each a different length and insulation colour corresponding the far an individual reed switch is from the plug. A tenth (shortest) wire, numbered 1 just has crimps (A) & (C). The last (longest) wire, numbered 11, has (A) & (B) crimps but then the wire doubles back to the top and is fitted with another male crimp. The (A) crimp of all the wires is inserted into the plug body. The top reed switch is inserted between wire 1, (C) crimp and wire 2, (B) crimp. The next switch between wire 2, (C) crimp and wire 3, (B) crimp, and so on down the line. The reed switches must be installed the correct way round and there is a dot marked on the body to indicate this. The doubling back of wire 11 allows for a circuit that is always shorted so it is possible to differentiate between an empty tank and an open circuit fault. Once the loom is assembled the draw tool is inserted through the tube and hooked onto the longest wire. The loom is then drawn into the tube. The plug housing is attached to the plug body and forms a seal onto the top of the tube.

Slide the magnet and float onto the outside of the tube. This would be the point to test for correct operation before a dab of mastic is added to hold longest wire in place and seal the base cap.

Good try. You have to make sensor water proof and robust as you are having a glass tube. We do have float position based sensors and also continuous resolution capacitor type sensors made from Stainless steel.

SS Tubes we use are 10mm diameter and can be long up to 5m (normally 1.5m). Nothing seriously can happen to them for even 10 years in use and these are insensitive to small dirt and do not corodate. Such sensors are to be made affordable.

New Design has capacitive sensor for continuous measurement from 0% to 100% fluid level (water in this case but can be used for other fluid also). Sensor head has electronics and is powered by 12V 30mA (15V 50mA maximum) low current power source connected by a signal cable which provides power to the sensor and also carries signal to the indicator. Sensor body is Stainless steel. Normally signal is switched between 5mA and 20mA, however I have also made provision to switch higher current 10mA and 40mA for stronger signal transmission. To avoid signal and ground problem, both power and signal lines are made polarity independent, that means one can interchange the wires between + and - wiring and it will not affect measurement.

We have first visual look for the sensor ready now and we will keep improving. We have now custom made LED bar array for linear graphic display of the water level and will like to add LCD / OLED display also to display volume of fluid in numeric values. Serial RS232 port is also reserved for data collection and data recording in nVSRAM or EEPROM. I have tried cable length up to 300m from sensor to indicator and it could transmit signal without any problem. For greater distances, I prefer to use wireless transmitter and receiver and want to avoid long cables.

Nice, not going for the low tech solution?

Hi Epke:
Problem with those direct indicator is that they show fluid level at the same level and can't be mounted in your house and having a water tank on top of the building several meters away.
Fluid Level Sensors are already in use in industries but our aim is to make these affordable for home and also intermix them with automatic or semi automatic pump control systems. Our target is to reach million homes in India. We have just made a beginning.
For users, our design are utter simple but in fact our design are most advanced in electronics. I have embedded every possible knowledge in the design keeping few factors in mind. These are:
1. sensor life 5+ years

2. Not to affect water quality and use high quality stainless steel in sensor

3. Low operating voltage design < 15V (6V minimum) and low current < 50mA

4. No Dc current or high voltage into water - only dielectric sensing with small AC signal

5. Cable carrying both power to the sensor and also bringing back signal to reduce cost

6. Indicator which can be mounted even 300 meters away from tank

7. Low power consumption < 5W for the entire electronics and can be battery operated too

8. Affordable for all by keeping below 50% of industrial sensors

Main aim is to do what people want and their reaction is the main driving force as these are for them finally. If something better can be done then it will be done as we are doing research every day and designing something or other new for the next versions.

I am also planning water resource management for agriculture, gardens and green houses. These are under research and development right now.

A new linear graph just today obtained for capacitive water level sensor for 1.2m depth tank is here for you all. There are two sets of repeat curves that were taken after 24 hours to see if there was any difference in the reading. My next attempt will be on 20ft sensor which we are going to make tomorrow and then I want to see its results. I just got Stainless Steel tube for it.

Excellent, interesting work. Nice results.
Even in the UK, saving water is becoming important. We still rather take it for granted, but hopefully better usage and efficiency will slowly become the norm.
Del

Del,

We have the results of the Six Meter long Water Level Sensor which touched two stories of my building and I built a 6M long water tank simulator in a pipe filled with water and that made a total height to work with up to 12m. I took help of 4 people to slowly dip the sensor into water for every 5cm depths steps.

Here are the results shown graphically.

Great results. Must have been fun testing it
Del

yes, sensor was built today this morning in 3 hours by the person in the first picture on the left side. He is our technician. He also used the existing pipes to construct a water tank simulator with the help of a plumber who joined 3m pipes and also closed one end to hold water in the pipe. This work took 2 hours and external help of plumber was used. Then in the after noon we planned to take the reading for which capacitance digitizer and TDS2024 DSO of Tektronix was hooked. Finally reading were collected by son on his Laptop. He is in the first picture on the right side. One more man helped to hold the sensor on top floor of the building and he is our domestic help, cook and also does few engineering works efficiently.

I just supervised the work and given instructions to be followed and finally after data was emailed to me this evening, I put this data to program to generate the final results and that is what you see in the graph. I am going to repeat the experiment tomorrow morning for consistency and verification. I don't expect much changes. I think sensor can be put to use soon in the reservoir we have near our city from which we get water for our homes.

Hello all contributing friends;

This technology has been successfully tried now for many types of fluids like volatile liquid fuels, food juices and milk, drinking water and drainage water.

We are now in a position to call it a usable technology. However, we have one serious problem of identifying the actual dielectric constant of the fluid and for which I will like to add another part to it which can specifically tell us dielectric constant of the medium and then measurement will become independent of the fluid type by adopting dielectric property correction or adopted calibration.

We have very high need in India to save water and also we can make use of this technology for the cottage industries where they can't afford high cost.

If there is any interest in any non-profit group abroad or someone is from educational institute and wants to discuss or have reason to adopt technology elsewhere then I am prepared to discuss.

Thanks one and all. Dr. Shyam, India