PANAJI: Vacman Group’s portable mobile vacuum toilet is an innovation that is the need of the hour due to its environment-friendly nature. The company that has specialised in marine solutions over the last 15 years, has now entered the land domain to solve the day-to-day problems faced by the society.
Saving water, operating on solar energy with the unit mounted on a cargo vehicle, the ‘Vacmobile’ project has been supported by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) with a pilot product installed at the Girgaon Chowpatty in Mumbai.
Design Intervention India Pvt Ltd, led by Deepak Pathania and Hemal Lad, in a joint-effort worked closely with Vacman, with the result being a complete one-stop solution.
Livenewsgoa.com caught up with the Goa-based director of Vacman Sanitation Solutions, Cdr (retd) Anup P. Keny to know more about their latest product. Here is the full interview.
LNG: What are the striking features of VacMobile ?
APK: Vacuum Toilets were introduced in aircrafts to reduce the consumption of water in flushing of toilets. The same concept is used in land-based applications too. The toilets in Vacmobile use only 1.2 Litres per flush, thus allowing more number of flushes for the same collection tankage. The Vacmobile is easy to pack and deploy and hence can be driven to any desired location with ease. Power is essential for generation of vacuum. Solar energy is used to generate the power for driving the vacuum generator thus making it possible for its use even during power outage/absence of electric supply.
LNG: How significant is the innovation in terms of solving the common issues faced by the society?
APK: Availability of toilets and especially clean toilets is yet to reach to all locations. The Vacmobile can be positioned near a garden in the morning and shifted to a market place in the afternoon and yet another place in the evening, It is completely self-contained and hence there is no need to develop infrastructure at all the locations.
LNG: How did the concept/design come through and what challenges did you face in execution/prototyping?
APK: ‘Dial a Toilet’ has been an idea that we have been toying since long. Lockdown provided us the free time to think of a solution in this direction. Storing all components in the restricted space was the biggest challenge. There were a lot of permutation and combinations resulting in a lot of cutting and welding, work and rework. The sustained efforts by ‘Vacman,’ and ‘Design Intervention India Pvt Ltd’, finally resulted in the beautiful product.
LNG: What’s the reasoning behind diversifying to land-based solutions?
APK: It may not be possible to create infrastructure for toilets at all places. Vacmobile allows the flexibility to position a toilet at any desired location devoid of any fixed infrastructure. Although it is our right to get water, this precious commodity is going to be scarce by the day. Vacuum Toilet uses only 1.2 Litres of water per flush as against 9 to 12 Litres in any commercially available toilet.
LNG: Your company’s contribution to indigenously-built aircraft carrier, how do you look at it?
APK: It is every Indian’s dream to contribute to our National Asset. Commissioning the sanitary facility for use by 1200 personnel on the carrier was a challenge and needed our men to work day and night to set the system consisting of more than 250 toilets to work. Working on the carrier was a pride for our men and that possibility to sail during the maiden voyage of the indigenously-built carrier was a big motivation. We have our system installed on more than 100 warships, but having the system on the Aircraft Carrier means much more.
LNG: Do you look at any avenues to provide solutions in Goa?
APK: The Vacmobile was to prove the concept. We could install such a system on a non self-propelled platforms. That the toilet used only 1.2L water means lesser sewage for disposal. With most of the states coastline used for tourism, there is a big potential to place such toilets at various locations on the beaches. At night these units can be driven or towed to sewage treatment facilities for disposal of collected sewage and made ready for deployment on the beaches again in the morning.
