With railway tracks found to be filthiest and dirtiest, the Railway Development Cell, as part of Swachchh Bharat campaign, has come up with a design that combines the advantages of Vacuum toilets and those of bio-toilets to create a new design of “Hybrid Vacuum Toilet” — also a first of its kind in the world.
It will also have bio-digester tank to convert human fecal matter into water and small amount of gases before discharging the same on the ground track. A prototype has been made by modifying the standard flushing protocol of a vacuum toilet so as to create water seal and additional post flush cycles and this concept has been converted into a working prototype by Indian Railways as a first ever system of its kind to have been developed and built by any railway system in the world.
Typically, a conventional toilet or Biotoilet uses 10-15 litres of water per flush whereas the vacuum toilet consumes only approximately 500 ml of water for flushing. This newly developed toilet has also been fitted in one coach of Dibrugarh Rajdhani for trail. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in his Budget speech 2015 has announced that Indian Railways will fit vacuum toilets on trains.
“The prototype consists of a custom designed vacuum toilet adapted from a commercially available vacuum toilet that is used in aircrafts which evacuates its discharge into a bio-digester tank which is now successfully proven in the biotoilets of Indian Railways. The biodigester tank is fitted underneath the coach and contains anaerobic bacteria that convert human fecal matter into water and small amount of gases before discharging the same on the ground/track,” said a railway official.
By transferring the discharge of the vacuum toilets into biodigester, the need to create separate ground handling installation and creating additional sewer load on the Municipal Corporation will be done away with.