JOIN USCoronavirus: Nashik-based senior citizen makes sprayer to sanitise roads, compounds
For months, Rajendra Jadhav had been following the news of how coronavirus was creating upheavals by devastating the health infrastructure and paralysing normal life.
The sexagenarian villager from Satana in Nashik district had the vision to realise that this virus has the potential to create havoc if it happens to enter his village.
The information about how COVID-19 infection spreads and awareness messages about the need for sanitisation, pouring in from radio, TV and WhatsApp messages, made him realise the need for a mass sanitisation drive in his village and tehsil.
The self-taught engineer, who has been putting his technical knowledge to use in making agricultural tools and types of machinery to suit the needs of the local farming community, decided to develop a mass sanitising machine.
Accordingly, Jadhav started his research in his village workshop to develop a machine that can be used for mass cleaning of roads and public spaces.
Within 25 days, he came up with an innovative sprayer mounted on a tractor which is capable of sanitising or washing large areas like roads, societies, doors, compounds, walls, etc.
The sprayer consists of two radial fans of aluminium, moving opposite to each other. In terms of mechanism, each fan sucks air from two opposite directions, which is released through nozzles at high pressure with minute droplets.
As the panel rotates 180 degrees, it can cover from the ground up to 15-feet-tall walls. Any 15 HP tractor can be used to operate this sprayer.
Jadhav's machine has a capacity to store 600 litres of disinfectant-mixed-water in the tanker. As a result, compounds, doors can easily be sanitised with this sprayer.
An added advantage of using this sprayer for disinfecting works is that it hardly requires any human intervention thus preventing human contact. A single person can drive the tractor and operate the sprayer.
‘Yashwant’ santisation sprayer has been identified as a potential S&T based innovative solution in the Challenge COVID-19 Competition (C3) organised by the National Innovation
Foundation
The cost incurred for developing this machine is around Rs 1.75 lakh, Jadhav said.
This sprayer is being used by Satana Nagar Nigam to cleanse and disinfect about 30 sq km area in Satana.
Upon seeing the utility of this tractor-mounted sprayer machine, a friend from Dhule district requested Jadhav to make one for sanitising his village. The second machine manufactured by Jadhav has been deployed for sanitisation in Dhule district.
"It has been named ‘Yashwant’ sanitisation sprayer. This is the brand name that I use for all the agricultural tools I make," he said.
While Rajendra Jadhav has applied for a patent for his unique sprayer, he has also sent across his innovative design to the National Innovation Foundation (NIF). The Yashwant sprayer has been identified as a potential S&T based innovative solution in India's fight against COVID-19.