Introduction

Worldwide, the water demand is anticipated to increase by 55% by 2050. Much of the demand is driven by agriculture, which accounts for 70% of global freshwater use, and food production will need to grow by 69% by 2035 to feed the growing population. Water withdrawal for energy, used for cooling power stations, is also expected to increase by over 20%. In other words, the near future presents one big freshwater drain after the next. What’s more? Right now, according to a NASA-led study, many of the world’s freshwater sources are being drained faster than they are being replenished.Of the world’s major aquifers (gravel and sand-filled underground reservoirs), 21 out of 37 are receding, from India and China to the United States and France. The Ganges Basin is depleting, due to population and irrigation demands, by an estimated 6.31 centimeters every year.

To overcome freshwater scarcity, a simpler and cheaper solution is rainwater capture and purification of water from available sources. Considering all the issues we are facing, couple of questions arises which need to be answered. Firstly, can the world simply purify its way out of the freshwater crisis? The answer is “Yes”, water purification is one of the prominent solutions to overcome this issue. Secondly, are people getting the advantages out of purifiers? The answer is mixed. Due to cost pressures, business could be an even greater driver of water efficiency than governments. Many of the big multinational companies are way ahead of governments when it comes to understanding and acting on the challenges that we are facing. In this regard low cost water purification techniques are required to come out of this water scarcity so that it would be easily available to the population.