A novel water filter technology for rural areas

Most of rural community in India does not have access to safe drinking water. The purpose of this work is to provide a technology for obtaining safe drinking water for rural population by a low cost, easy to make, domestic water filter system. The filter is made of rice husk ash (RHA) which is available in abundant quantity in rural India. The performance of the RHA based water filter is good with the bacterial trapping of 96±3% and turbidity removal of 94±3%. A field study of filter has been carried out at KEM Rural Hospital Vadu, which shows similar performance as in laboratory. Our studies also showed RHA based water filter is better then ceramic candle filter. We are working with several NGO's and UNICEF, India to proliferate this water filter. We have trained 40 NGO's with this innovative technology. More than 3000 filters made by village volunteers are presently in use.