IIT Madras Researchers' International team wins US Energy Dept’s ‘Waves to Water Prize’

IIT Madras researchers which were part of an international team have won the first two phases of the 'Waves to Water Prize.' The objective is to design a wave energy-based desalination system to provide post-disaster drinking water supply to coastal areas.

In a competition organised by the US Department of Energy, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras researchers which were part of an international team has won the first two phases of the 'Waves to Water Prize.' The objective is to design a wave energy-based desalination system to provide post-disaster drinking water supply to coastal areas. Team ‘Nalu e Wai’ is a collaboration between the US, India and Sweden.
Team ‘Nalu e Wai’ (Hawaiian for ‘waves into freshwater’) is working on a rapidly-deployable, small-scale wave-powered desalination system. Deployment of substantial numbers of these devices in such water-scarce regions could produce life-changing results for water-starved coastal communities. The US Department of Energy Waterpower Technologies Office organises the ‘Waves to Water’ Prize to challenge innovators to submit ideas to develop wave-powered desalination systems.

The collaborating universities in Team ‘Nalu e Wai’ are IIT Madras, the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, U.S. and Uppsala University, Sweden. Team ‘Nalu e Wai’ was among only 17 winners, out of more than 100 global teams, in Rounds I and II. They were awarded monetary prizes for these selections.

Talking about the research undertaken by the team, Professor Abdus Samad, Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras, said, “Our team’s primary driver for this submission was the water shortage in India and to supplement our knowledge in the area of wave energy conversion. We felt strongly that we could devise a system that would achieve the prize-motivated benefits of applicability to disaster-stricken areas and remote communities, while also being scalable to larger community applications such as Chennai, or in developed countries with water shortages, such as coastal California.”

“The idea is new for portable small-scale wave-powered desalination devices. Our concept is entirely scalable. Its modularity allows it to be adapted to varying deployment sites and wave regimes. The same concept could easily be scaled to support much larger water production with increasing flap size and by deploying devices in numbers. Larger RO units, adding additional RO units in parallel, together with larger flap geometry, can easily result in much greater freshwater production. This application is of particular interest to the places like Chennai, where water scarcity is fast reaching critical levels,” he added.

The Waves to Water Prize is a five-stage, USD 3.3 million contest to accelerate the development of small, modular, wave-powered desalination systems capable of providing potable drinking water in disaster relief scenarios and remote coastal locations. This prize is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s ‘Water Security Grand Challenge,’ focused on advancing transformational technology and innovation to meet the global need for secure and affordable water.

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