Sidoarjo water resources have been contaminated by the mudflow caused by PT Lapindo-Brantas for almost 6 years. Since that, Sidoarjo citizens were complaining their contaminated water resources, which are very important for daily needs such as drinking, washing, and bathing.
Pungky Hertanto, a high school student from a small town Mojokerto, who actually living near to mudflow areas, found a technology to clean the water pollution. His innovation brings him to be the first winner of the national scientific innovation competition last September 2012.
Pungky developed water-purifying equipment by testing water from six different resources. He checked out the water temperature, color, smell, and the bacterium to find out how bad the mud has contaminated the water. After that, he bought some equipment to build water-purifying equipment that costs him Rp 100.000.
With only small amount of money, he bought zeolit to reduce the water smell, manganese greensand to reduce iron and bacterium, and dry bagasse as water purifier. He made a pipe as the water goes to get clean, with electricity help and ultra violet lamp to make it prefect. He made a tool that looks like a shoot gun and he named it as SPAT, a short for Sistem Penjernih Air Terintegrasi (Integrated Water-Purifying System).
As a result, after using SPAT, the water quality in two sampling areas are successfully clean based on the Ministry of Health’ standard. However, the rest water resources are not fully clean, the cleanliness level is only around 61% – 77%. Although his innovation is not perfect yet, Pungky is quite satisfied with the result. In the future he will create better tools in big scale for Sidoarjo citizens, so they will have more clean water resources for daily life usage.
This innovation might look ordinary because a high school student invented it and the effects of the result can only be seen in small scale. However, if the government helps with better research and funding aspects, the SPAT water purifier can be developed further and in big scale so the effects will be bigger and there will be more Sidoarjo citizens that can enjoy clean water for their daily lives.
In my opinion, if the government supports this kind of invention, there will be more high school students like Pungky who will create and innovate useful things out of the knowledge that they get from school. More students will be more eager to apply their knowledge to the society and help improving many people’s lives, as well as earning achievements in their early teenage.
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