A project designed and developed by the Civil Engineering students of KLE Society’s Smt. C.I. Munvalli Polytechnic, Hubballi, on collecting run off water (rainwater) on the roads to produce electricity and recharging water bodies has secured first prize in the India International Science Festival held in Uttar Pradesh.
Giving details of the students’ achievement Director of KLE Society Shankranna Munavalli, Principal Prof. Veeresh Angadi and Mentor Prof. P.G. Tewari told press persons here on Saturday said that the Uttar Pradesh Government has already evinced interest in getting the concept patented and the college would also approach the Government of Karnataka on getting it patented.
Students from different technical education institutions from across the country, including engineering colleges, had participated in the event held in Lucknow from October 5 to 8.
A team of 11 juries from IIT Delhi, NIT Suratkal, MNIT Jaipur and others verified the projects and out of the total 100 projects from across the country, the project of Pruthviraj S. Sarangmath and Prasanna M. Kalkoti titled “Strategies for enhancing local water bodies wth production of electricity through water and Enlil turbine” was chosen as the best one.
Explaining about their project Pruthviraj and Prasanna said that the objective of the project was to ensure that rainwater falling on the roads did not just ended up in drains. Instead it could be used to recharge the water bodies and also generate electricity.
In the project developed under the guidance of Prof. Nagaraj Ganachari and Prof. Akshay Prasad and Head of the Civil Engineering Department Prof. Vijaya Patil, the students have ensured that the rainwater is filtered inside the side drains through slow sand filtration process, which could be used for drinking and farming and for generating electricity. The Enlil turbines used in the project could generate electricity through wind energy generated by the movement of vehicles on the water-logged road. A single Enlil turbine is capable of producing 1 KW of power every hour and could easily provide average daily electricity consumption of two households, the students explained.
Prof. Veeresh Angadi said the primary objective of the project was to ensure that rainwater did not go waste and electricity generation was a byproduct.
