India Science News: Manipal University student designed waterless – odourless toilet for Railways

Hopefully train journeys will be more pleasant with stinking toilets becoming a thing of the past. Vinod Anthony Thomas, a student of Manipal University, has won the second prize for designing a waterless and odourless toilet for the Indian Railways.

In keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Clean India initiative, the railways held a public competition for waterless and odourless toilets in trains.

The competition was to design such toilets for operation and maintenance. A Xth semester student of Faculty of Architecture (FOA), Manipal University, he participated in the competition organized by Research Designs and Standards Organization, Lucknow. Ten entries were shortlisted.

Vinod’s design was adjudged the second best and he bagged Rs 75,000 as prize money. The second place was shared by another designer, Rahul Garg and teammate Saurabh Hans.

Vinod’s toilet does away with the unhygienic problem of disposal of human waste on the tracks. His project also mentions that the existing model of toilets are not subjected to effective flushing, resulting in the accumulation of dirt and therefore the foul smell.

His design introduces a system of waste management, which prevents generation of foul smell and replaces the system of flushing with water by a conveyor system carrying waste in a hermetically sealed pocket to a large collection bin to store waste and is run manually by a crank wheel.

The bin has been designed in a way to reduce the amount of waste by way of decomposition and forced ventilation (evaporation of water). Nishant H Manapure, director, Faculty of Architecture, said that Vinod has brought laurels to Manipal University.

“It’s the first of its kind for FOA and I am hopeful students will showcase their talent in future also”.