X-Filtration
This workshop was conducted in two locations - one at the venue of the exhibition on 4 January and the second for community members at Vijaynagar metro station on 5 January. Water researcher Krithika Ramchander shared her work of creating low-cost filters using plant tissues to purify drinking water.
Contamination of drinking water causes more than half a million deaths every year. Participants explored the structure of plant tissues, particularly xylem and discovered how it can be leveraged for purification purposes. Using simple materials, they also constructed their filtration systems.
Explore the first day in a blog by Yamini Undurthi. Discover what happened on the second day with Mediator Manish Jayashekar.
About the Researcher
Krithika Ramchander is a Tata Fellow and a first year Master’s student in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She did her undergraduate studies in the same field at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She then worked for a year with Shell Technologies as a Heat Transfer Engineer and was involved in the design and maintenance of furnaces, heat exchangers, and other heat transfer equipment. At MIT, she is currently working on the development of low cost water filters using plant tissue with Rohit Karnik. Having a background in Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, her broad interests include Micro/Nanofluidics and its application in biological systems.
Connected Exhibits and Programmes
Argus by Harpreet Sareen - an exhibit demonstrating how plants can be used to detect lead levels in water
What’s in Your Water - a workshop to test fluoride and chloride level in water samples