Engineering students innovate to conserve natural resources

The competitions titled ‘innoWAH’ was conducted under the theme ‘Conservation of natural resources using technology’.Out of 32 teams that took part in the competitions, 14 teams were short-listed to display their projects during the finals that was conducted on the premises of IIT-M. A mentor was assigned to each team to help the students flush out their project proposals and ensure that they developed a quality product. The projects that were displayed at the finals varied in innovation and utility but ultimately served the purpose of saving natural resources. According to Alamelu N, former chairperson, PALS, “The goal of innoWAH was to bring out the innovative capabilities of students and to promote team spirit and communication skills. The finalists were short-listed based on the students’ ability to maintain a strict time-line and follow a rigorous protocol. The students also got an opportunity to interact with industry experts, researchers and IIT alumni.” 

The team consisting of R Sunil Sundhar, N Venkatesan, P Kiruthiga and M Shahabudeen from MAM College of Engineering & Technology, Trichy, were declared the winners for their project ‘artificially constructed wetland’ which converts industrial effluents into water that can be used for agriculture purposes. Sunil Sundhar, Project lead, said, “Our project deals with an economically viable solution to deal with industrial effluents. Our project consists of two chambers through which the industrial effluents are passed through. The first chamber removes the suspended particles, dissolved solids and colour that are present in the effluents while the second chamber removes heavy metals as well as re-oxygenates the water. We used water hyacinth as it has the maximum capability to remover heavy metals. However, it also removes the oxygen content. So, we also included vetiver in the second chamber to re-oxygenate the water.”