Received: 21 August 2021 Revised: 14 October 2021 Accepted: 14 November 2021 DOI: 10.1002/tqem.21832 RESEARCH ARTICLE Novel hydrodynamic cavitation based hand pump for disinfection of groundwater Sarjerao Bapu Doltade 1, 2 Aniruddha Bhalchandra Pandit 1 1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India 2 ITIC Foundation, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Telangana, India Correspondence Sarjerao B. Doltade, Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai 400019, India. Email: sarjeraodoltade@gmail.com Abstract India Mark-II hand pump was successfully modified in the present study so as it can serve as an efficient tool for the disinfection of the borewell water. This modified Hand Pump works on the principle of hydrodynamic cavitation, which can potentially dis- rupt the bacteria and fungi rendering them unviable. The reduction in organic carbon was also found in the borewell water. However hydrodynamic cavitation technology was induced first time in the hand pump for the disinfection of groundwater. Several field trials were carried out at different field locations in Maharashtra, India to val- idate the modifications of this novel technology. This modification does not require any additional energy to purify the water and is found to have yielded > 90% water disinfection. The third-party analysis was carried out from NABL certified microbio- logical laboratories which showed that all Gram negative pathogens were successfully destroyed. Therefore, the people who rely on hand pumps across the world for ground- water pumping will be able to access quality potable water and can be rescued from pathogen-based waterborne diseases. Hand pump cavitation will be a water disinfec- tion milestone in the emerging era of ecologically benign, innovative, and cost-effective rural water disinfection technology. KEYWORDS groundwater, hand pump, hydrodynamic cavitation, potable water, water disinfection 1 INTRODUCTION More than 43.85% population of the world inhabits rural area (WHO & UNICEF, 2017). From the Indian context, the Ministry of Water Resources has been putting hand-pumps in the villages for the people to access the borewell water. However, the quality of drinking water in rural India is seen not to comply with the WHO standards for human consumption due to high bacterial load. According to WHO report 2017, contaminated water has been enormously affecting human life which causes 485,000 diarrheal deaths each year (WHO & UNICEF, 2017). People in the rural areas cannot afford the costly and energy-intensive methods such as Reverse Osmosis, UV irradiation, nano-filtration, etc. to purify the water due to high cost and irreg- ular supply of electricity. On the contrary, people living in the cities are comparatively accessing quality water due to the availability of facilities to purify due to the affordability. Because of alarming health concerns, there is an exigent need to develop new technologies or modify the existing ones to provide disinfected drinking water to rural inhabitants at a very low cost of treatment (Kausley et al., 2019; WHO & UNICEF, 2017). India Mark-II hand pump is most popular throughout South Asia and Africa. The modification in the existing India Mark-II hand pump has been carried out and are observed first time, to effectively disin- fect the water (Pandit, 2015). The modification in the geometry of the existing lower check valve causes hydrodynamic cavitation. Cavitation is a phenomenon of nucleation, growth, and collapse of gaseous/vapor cavities leading to localized high temperature (4000–5000 K) and pressure pulses (10-15 MPa) leading to the disruption of the micro- bial cells (Doltade et al., 2017, 2019; Doltade & Gole, 2017). The actual disintegration of microorganisms occurs due to two mechanisms Environ Qual Manage. 2021;1–10. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC 1 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tqem