IEC Tech
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An Indian entrepreneur is promoting tech that recovers water
from the atmosphere and from data centres. International standards are there to
help him scale the technology further.
A teenage Star Wars fan may have solved one
of the world’s most pressing problems of water shortage. Eighteen-year old
architecture student Swapnil Shrivastav was
enjoying George Lucas’ 1977 film when he noticed the vertical pumps called
“vaporators” on Luke Skywalker’s desert planet, Tatooine, which were drawing
water from the air. “In 2012, I was in my second year of college and we were
doing a project called ‘Imagine the future of water and cities’, which asked
for innovative solutions for water scarcity,” he explains. “The idea came from
science fiction but when we investigated further, it seemed that we could
actually make it happen.”
Uravu Labs, which Shrivastav co-founded in 2017 in
Bangaluru, has raised USD 4 million to develop a means of extracting water from
the air. The startup is one of a myriad of technology solutions addressing
India’s challenging and complex water management.
Access to water is not guaranteed
The statistics paint a dire picture. Thirty five million of
the country’s 1,46 billion population lack access to safe water, according to
global nonprofit Water.org. It cites extreme water stress, contaminated
surface water and lack of access to piped water supply, in addition to the
impact from climate change, which is exacerbating the availability of safe
water and sanitation for families in India.
UNICEF estimates that waterborne diseases cost USD 600
million a year in India, hitting people living in drought and flood-prone areas
the most. A recent WHO report indicates that providing potable
drinking water could stop 400 000 people dying from diarrheal disease. It adds
that with universal coverage of safely managed drinking water, 14 million DALYs
(disability adjusted life years) could be averted. “The stark reality is that,
even after high rainfall, we still rely on groundwater,” says Shrivastav. The
reason is that the water pipe infrastructure is far from universal, and in many
places, piped water is also polluted. Instead, people have resorted to digging
boreholes to tap groundwater.
UNICEF says the fast rate of groundwater depletion in
India is one of the world’s highest, due to the proliferation of drilling.
The World Bank predicts that, if current trends persist, at least a
quarter of India’s agriculture will be at risk. “Agriculture in India is
groundwater dependent and lots of domestic and even industrial uses are
groundwater dependent,” Shrivastav explains. “But groundwater is not a
renewable resource, and the deeper and deeper you go, the more it becomes
unviable to tap into. There are places in Bangaluru where, even at depths of
1 500 ft to 2 000 ft, there's no groundwater.”
An alternative is to transport water over long distances in
tankers to areas of the country which don’t have piped water supply or reliable
groundwater. However, it is an expensive solution, forcing people to pay
over the odds to access the resource. It is also environmentally questionable.
“We wanted to find a solution which could solve two or three of problems at
once,” Shrivastav indicates.
Drinking water from the air
Atmospheric water generation (AWG) is widely seen as one of
the environmentally sound answers to water scarcity. The technology harvests
moisture from the air, can be powered by renewable energy and, since the
systems do not rely on traditional freshwater sources, can be placed where
water is scarce. The global AWG market was estimated at USD 2,8
billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8% from 2025 to 2034.
Shrivastav’s company uses a hygroscopic desiccant to absorb
vapour from the air, which is then heated to between 50-70 C° to release
drinking water. Its standard unit fits into a 20-foot shipping container and
can output 2 000 litres per day. Powered by renewable energy (such as solar)
the operating costs are less than two cents per litre, making it 10 times more
efficient than its competitors, Shrivastav claims. The “proprietary
combination” of liquid silica desiccant it uses is “abundant, non-hazardous and
costs less than one dollar per kg”.
The start-up is hoping to attract investors – either Indian
or international – and is also looking for more funding from the Indian
government, which in turn could help in producing the containers on a more
massive scale and reduce their price.
In the meantime, the company switched its attention to more
commercial applications, including selling renewable drinking water to hotels
and restaurants in glass bottles, which it recollects after use. “It’s an
alternative to the packaged water market, which draws on a lot of groundwater.”
Where standards and conformity assessment can help
Basing new or emerging technologies on internationally
agreed standards can help to build trust in the investor community by ensuring
they are safe and perform as expected. In the medium term, standards will help
to bring down the price of newly launched products and also ensure that they
can be exported to other countries.
For example, the IEC publishes most of the standards
relating to renewable energy systems, from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels right
down to tidal energy conversion. All the solar PV standards are published
by IEC Technical Committee 82 and include the IEC 62257 series
of technical specifications which make recommendations for small renewable
hybrid systems, involving, for example, a solar panel and a battery. They have
been recognized by the World Bank and the United Nations Industrial Development
Organization (UNIDO) as an important contribution to electricity access in
remote and deprived areas of the world and can be used as a blueprint to power
solutions like those promoted by Shrivastav’s company.
IECEE, the IEC System of Conformity Assessment Schemes for
Electrotechnical Equipment and Components, offers a scheme for solar PV panels,
which gives access to qualified testing laboratories for the certification of
PV components and modules in accordance with the relevant IEC International
Standards. IECEE PV certificates demonstrate that all elements and
components are designed, manufactured and tested according to IEC Standards,
ensuring compliance with quality and safety requirements worldwide.
The company is also developing a product which captures
waste heat generated from data centres to produce water and uses that water to
cool down the servers. Pilot projects are being set up in India and the Middle
East. “Data centres can cut down on their cooling cost and also become the
infrastructure which produces water rather than consuming it,” Shrivastav says.
That is where the work of one of the ISO/IEC joint technical
committees, JTC 1/SC 39: Sustainability, IT and data centres, comes in.
Its key publications include ISO/IEC 30134-1, which defines common
requirements for a holistic suite of KPIs for data centre resource efficiency,
including the use of cooling water and the recovery of energy.
The company plans to double operations in Bangalore this
year to output 8 000 litres per day and to launch factories in two more
Indian cities, targeting the hospitality sector. Additionally, it is developing
an industrial-scale unit capable of generating 30 000 to 50 000
litres per day. Shrivastav is hopeful about the future: “If, instead
of making 10 or 15 units a year, we make a thousand units per year, it can
drastically reduce capital expenditure. If we can also find better local
financing, then a village in South India would only have to pay for maintenance
because the running costs are very cheap, especially if paired with solar. Then
it becomes viable.”
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