Meet Bhubaneswar’s Grade-7 Kid, Whose Patented Technology Can Recycle Soap water

One of the biggest concerns behind the scarcity of fresh water is that they are getting polluted. The most obvious reason is the wastewater that comes out from homes and Industries, which to a large extent, is left untreated and is released directly into the water bodies. But, here comes a change right from the heart of Odisha, the Bhubaneshwar!

Meet Ayushman Nayak, a Grade 7 student from Kiit International school, Bhubaneshwar, who has recently been granted a patent for his idea of developing a washing machine that can recycle, and thus, repurpose the soap water generated inside the machine.

In Nayak’s family, finding ways to reduce the wastage of water was always something of paramount importance. Samabesh Nayak, the father of Ayushman, who is working as an administrative officer in a Management College, instilled in every member of his family, including Ayushman, his value of taking judicious care while using water, to avoid wastage. Having an overhead tank installed inside the house, Samabesh and his wife Sucharita, closely observed the amount of water that goes into bathing, washing clothes & utensils and other domestic needs.

Samabesh said that he and his wife were well aware of the quantity of water going into the washing machine, and was always thinking of ways to control it. If there is someone who closely witnessed and contemplated the urgency about reducing wastage of water inside the house, it was certainly Ayushman, who took the challenge upon him and started working on developing a viable solution for it.

He directed his ideas towards providing an effective solution to reduce wastage of water.

Being constantly focused on the need, Ayushman thought of adding a filtration system inside the washing machine, so as to recycle the soap water that usually gets drained out. Finally, his efforts paid off when he was able to install a 5-layer filtration process in the washing machine to clean and store the water for reuse.

Soon when he learned that his technology is innovative, he submitted his idea to the Central Government under the title “System for Using Recycled Soap Water in Washing Machine and Method”, which eventually earned him an intellectual property rights patent.

When asked how he embarked on his idea, Ayushman unveiled that he was keen to develop a machine which can process the soap water, coming out of the drain hose, and store it for future purpose. He was Grade III when he started working on it and received the APJ Abdul Kalam Ignite Award from National Innovation Foundation (NIF) in 2017.

Ayushman, on his visit to Gujarat for receiving the award, was startled to see engineers developing a practical version of his idea, with the same 5-layers of filtration. His honorary patent has a validity of 20 years and is currently under his father’s name.

Ayushman believes that this could be just the beginning as he wants to come up with more innovations that will potentially solve many domestic problems and would offer the solution to help a significantly large number of people.