Los Angeles-based XPRIZE, which designs incentive competitions to solve humanity’s big challenges, is running the water abundance prize with the support of the Tata Group and Australian Aid.

Indian startup Uravu that has developed a technology to create water from the air is among the five finalists in a global competition. The two-year competition is to create a device that extracts a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the air using 100% renewable energy.

The Hyderabad-based company will compete with four other companies in the final round of the Water Abundance XPRIZE, worth $ 1.75 million. The five finalists were selected from 98 teams in the previous round, from 25 countries, and will share a $250,000 milestone prize purse. The winners will receive $ 1.5 million, to be announced in August 2018.

Los Angeles-based XPRIZE, which designs incentive competitions to solve humanity’s big challenges, is running the water abundance prize with the support of the Tata Group and Australian Aid.

Uravu is run by a multidisciplinary team of five, with engineering, sciences, architecture and design backgrounds. The young team says it “believes in working on hard problems which are technologically achievable and also culturally and socially salient.” “Solving challenges around water not only requires amazing technology but also empathy and systems thinking,” a release from XPRIZE said on the team’s vision.

Led by Swapnil Shrivastav, Amit, Bharath, Sandeep and Venkatesh are other members of the group. “….the team is developing a completely off-grid water from air device, spinning together the magic of material sciences and solar thermal energy,” the release said. A scalable device of this nature could revolutionise access to fresh water.

The finalists will begin round 2 testing in July 2018 at a location to be determined. During this phase, teams must fully demonstrate that their device can extract a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmosphere using 100 percent renewable energy, at a cost of no more than two cents per liter, XPRIZE said. “At the end of this testing phase, the team whose solution enables the greatest ability to create decentralized access to water – giving people the power to access fresh water whenever and wherever they need it” will win the prize.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> International / by Varghese K. George / Washington – March 22nd, 2018