Professor Punit Singh’s efforts began with a area survey to grasp the soil and terrain of Taipadar village in Bastar district of Chhattisgarh.
| Photo Credit: V.V. Krishnan
The efforts of a researcher on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) have resulted in villages in Chhattisgarh being geared up with a sustainable water pumping system that requires zero electricity.
Punit Singh, affiliate professor on the Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST), has been engaged on an answer to handle the irrigation shortage in Chhattisgarh for the previous 10 years. His efforts began with a area survey to grasp the soil and terrain of Taipadar village in Bastar district.
According to IISc, attributable to Mr Singh’s efforts, Taipadar is now geared up with a sustainable water pumping system that requires zero electricity. His venture makes use of low-head test dams and cascades of such dams alongside rivers, with turbine pumps put in to pump water with none electricity.
The turbine makes use of about 90% of the river water circulation at low head (which is then recycled again to the river) to generate energy, particularly torque and velocity, which is then used to drive customary submersible multi-stage pumps. The novelty lies within the exact design of the system.
Depending on particular website situations, the place the water head ranges from 2-4 metres, the target is to raise and transport water to totally different elevations, often between 15 and 25 metres, and even up to 30 metres, if required.
Mr Singh began engaged on growing turbine pumps for electricity era throughout his PhD on the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. When he returned to India in 2009, he began exploring the deployment of ram pumps in Chhattisgarh, beginning with Taipadar.
“Two turbine pumps with power generation capabilities were generously sponsored by the KSB Pumps Trust in Germany. I invested about ₹50 lakh in a ram pump sourced from Rife, USA, and in the construction work, which spanned three years,” Mr Singh mentioned.
Apart from Taipadar, related programs have been set up in Girdalpara in Sukma district and Karhani in Gourella-Pendra-Marwahi (GPM) district.
In December 2022, the Foundation for Science Innovation and Development at IISc joined fingers with the Chhattisgarh Water Resources Department to scale up the water useful resource administration and irrigation infrastructure within the State. The areas coated beneath this collaboration embrace Karhani, Neelawaram (Sukma district), and Pongro (Jashpur district).
Under the collaboration, IISc. will check the standard of generators manufactured by varied distributors at a delegated simulation facility. Over the subsequent few years, the collaboration will give attention to putting in one or two pumps on every dam, together with piping, storage, and canal networks.
