HANGZHOU, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Lu Mingwei, 39, fell asleep on an eight-hour ride after a week-long field trip in the mountainous regions in the plateau province of Yunnan in southwest China.
He needed a break to refresh himself from the tight schedule of his water-lifting projects.
The karst landforms on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau have led to poor water preservation in the soil and for thousands of years, water scarcity has been a haunting issue even though the area boasts a number of lakes and rivers. That is also the bottleneck that has hindered locals from amassing a fortune.
In 2016, Lu's project was born and brought hope to the area. It features a technology using a pulse pump and other devices that take advantage of the potential energy of falling water to lift water to a higher place than its source.
Lu first saw such a device on a Youtube video as a university student. "The device obeyed the law of conservation of energy -- it lifted water by over 100 meters powered by the fall of water."
"If the water can be pumped up to the mountains on the plateau, it can help local farmers yield a good harvest," Lu said.
He soon built a lab at an energy company in the city of Shaoxing in east China's Zhejiang Province, which became the starting point of multiple projects that he initiated later.
Most of the projects are located in remote areas with poor conditions -- no concrete roads and weak communication signals, so Lu and his colleagues often had to rock climb and wade through water to reach remote villagers.
Lu's most indelible experience was in September 2018, when he traveled to Dongshan Township in Mile City in Yunnan. They were debugging devices in a downpour and had to record the data every five minutes through the night. The group of four completed all the work with the help of a battery-powered light bulb. And their shoes, plastered with a thick layer of red clay, weighed over 10 kg on each foot.
Lu's team successfully lifted water to fill pools of 15,000 cubic meters at a high-altitude mountain peak in Dongshan Township in half a year, benefiting more than 7,700 households. Even young people who went out to find work were lured back after the water problem was solved in the township. "Local officials were overjoyed and said what we've done has made history," Lu said.
Now Lu has a total of 28 projects under construction in mountainous Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. Over the past three years, they have completed 32 water-lifting projects, solving the issue of water shortages for 82,000 people.
The projects have also reduced 23,000 tonnes of carbon emissions and lowered electric bills by more than 20 million yuan (about 2.86 million U.S. dollars) every year, bringing an additional wealth of 6,000 yuan per capita for residents each year.
"For generations, mountain villagers have been walking dozens of miles to carry water during the dry season. But now, they can just turn on the tap to get clean water. Now that we've seen water irrigating the land, we expect to help residents get rid of poverty soon," Lu said excitedly, gazing at the top of the high pool. Enditem
