Inspiration
Earth's freshwater sources comprise 3% of the entire planet whereas 97% is covered by the oceans. Even though water is available it can't be consumed directly without being treated for desalination. Even though 40% of the entire population lives near the ocean coast, but 700 million people suffer from water scarcity in the world every year. As poet Samuel T. Coleridge put in his poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' that "Water water everywhere, nor a drop to drink" is the current scenario of the planet. The inspiration is to provide fast, compact and affordable water desalinator which is sustainable and scalable for the entire world.
What it does
The prototype takes in salt water and heating it up. The salt is left behind as a NaCl solid and clean water vapor is collected in an adjacent chamber.
How we built it
Using only materials available at MakeHarvard and primarily focusing on utilizing affordable sustainable solutions - such as chambers made of aluminum cans, of which the world consumes about 6.7k per second - we built a compact desalinator system.
Challenges we ran into
Heat-resistant material to seal the aluminum chambers was difficult to obtain and limited to the materials available here we used silicon to seal it. Making sure the chambers were water tight, distance between two chambers appropriate, reducing as much waste as possible, making sure the system was compact and make it easy to carry on the go. With more time, different variations of the project could be developed to scale to address water demand of entire communities in the world.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Making it compact, using existing materials which are available at large and are recyclable as well. We used aluminum cans which were abundant during the duration of the make-a-thon, this is definitely applicable in real life as consuming drinks in aluminum cans is part of most daily lifestyles. We stand true to our goal to produce a compact, affordable, and sustainable desalinator that is scalable.
What we learned
A lot can be made from recycling available materials. The solution is not as cumbersome or time consuming as perceived by people. Recycling can be fun and cheap simultaneously. Working with people just to have fun and build things is a lot easier than excessively stressing out over the final product. One can have fun, build and help in conserving the planet at the same time.
What's next for DESAL-A-BULL
Building in on our initial prototype to make it more compact and simple to develop in order to make it scalable to different situations around the world.
Built With
- 3dprinting
- acrylic
- arduino
- brasstubes
- c
- copperwire
- dht11
- laser
- plastictubes
- redbull-cans
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