The quintessential houseboat cruises in Kerala’s placid backwaters is being killed by a growing danger, the water hyacinths. The weed invaders are choking the waterlife and thereby creating a lot of environmental issues. The water hyacinth infestation is killing the fish which in turn is affecting the fisher community. After having identified these problems, four students of Mohandas College of Engineering and Technology –Adithya Shankar, Shanu Aziz, Anandu Maheendra and Jishnu Divakar–designed a water hyacinth remover. Channeliam.com’s flagship program I’m Startup Studio reports this student innovation which has a great social impact.
Water hyacinth affects the indigenous flora and fauna of any region. This includes eutrophication where water hyacinth reduces the oxygen level in the water, thus endangering other water species. Apart from this, it degrades the water quality also. In Alappuzha and many other regions, backwaters are the main tourist attraction. The engineering students who invented the Water Hyacinth Remover say the machine is an answer to all these problems. And the highlight of the product is its cost-efficiency. The product is portable too.
The project works on a Belconveyor mechanism. The mechanism has a group of buckets, which moves in a circular way, making the water hyacinth enter the buckets. A cutting unit comes at the back of the machine and it has many blades. These blades rotate in high RPM (rotations per minute). In the process, the water hyacinth falls into it is shredded into pieces. The tiny pieces of water hyacinth are collected in the boat. The residue can now be removed using manual labour.
Right now, their product is on the working model stage. The students developed the model to explain the mechanism and to present it as a project in the college. Their plan is to scale up the project and enter the market. They want to establish their startup once they recieve the funding.
It was a leisure boating trip to Alappuzha that brought them the idea of a water hyacinth remover. They saw how the backwaters were filled with water hyacinths and its adverse effect. A visit to Akkulam made them realize the gravity of the situation and they took a serious approach to the problem.
The students received Rs 20,000 funding for their project from KCST. The project was presented at TechCon at Thrissur Engineering College. The students assert that they received immense support from their guide Prof. Pradeep and their management.
