Inspired by Star Wars’ ‘moisture vaporator’ technology, a group of engineers from Kozhikode have created an innovative machine that can turn humid air into drinkable water
When the Indian city of Kozhikode found itself facing an unprecedented water crisis, a group of young engineers decided to look for solutions outside the box. Inspired by a fictional device seen in the films of Star WarsSwapnil Shrivastav and his colleagues founded Uravu Labs, a startup that turns moist air into drinkable water.
This innovation, born from a mix of curiosity and necessity, promises to revolutionize the way we deal with water scarcity, proving that sometimes science fiction can become reality. Engineering student Swapnil Shrivastav, creator of the project, commented on his invention as follows:
One element of inspiration was Star Wars, where there is a device that converts air into water. I thought, why not give it a try? It was more of a curiosity project.
Second Wookiepedia, a “moisture vaporator” is a device used in humidity farms to capture water from the atmosphere of arid planets like Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker grew up. This fictional device works, in Star Wars tradition, by extracting moisture from the air through refrigerated condensers that generate low-energy ionization fields. The captured water is then pumped or directed by gravity into a storage tank which regulates its pH levels. The vaporizers are capable of collecting 1.5 liters of water per day.
From a curious idea to a commercial reality
If science fiction authors could devise the details of such a device, Shrivastav and his colleagues Govinda Balaji and Venkatesh Raja must have thought they had a good chance of succeeding. So, in 2019, they founded Uravu Labs, a Bangalore-based startup. Their initial offering is a machine that converts air into water using a liquid desiccant. By absorbing moisture from the air, solar or renewable energy heats the desiccant to approximately 100°F, releasing the captured moisture into a chamber where it is condensed into drinkable water.
The entire process takes 12 hours but can produce an impressive total of 2,000 liters, about 500 gallons, of drinking water per day. However, Uravu had to change its path due to the costs of producing and operating the machines, which were too high for civilian use with current material technology, as explained by Shrivastav:
We had to move towards commercial consumer applications as they were willing to pay us and it is a sustainability driver for them.
This change was enough to keep the startup afloat, which now produces water for 40 different hospitality clients. Looking to the future, Shrivastav, Raja and Balaji are planning to investigate whether the desiccant can be made more efficient: can it run at a lower temperature to reduce operating costs, or is there another material that could prove cheaper? They are also looking into the possibility of connecting their device to data centers in a pilot project that would see waste heat from the centers used to heat the desiccant.
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Source: Uravu Labs
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