Final Design Proposal
Project Panda: Nkiru Agomuoh, Jonathan Applewhite, Yamani Miller, Matthew Jacobs, Kalada Abbey
Dr. Cannon
Background:
Our objective is to choose a country with a significant problem and to come up with an engineering-based solution to said issue. The solution must be economic and use appropriate technologies for the region in which we are working. We chose to solve the palpable water problem in Liberia. Currently only about 25% of Liberia’s population has constant access to safe drinking water.
Below are our three proposals to solve this issue:
Design 1: Wind powered water desalination
Though Liberia may not have much palpable water, they are a coastal nation, meaning they do have an abundant water supply in the ocean. Our first design would use the wind to create power to use to desalinate ocean water into drinking water. We would do this by building a wind turbine to create the energy needed to desalinate the water through a vacuum distillation process. We would then pipe water from the ocean into the desalination facility.
Design 2: Water filter/Energy production
In Liberia, there is a lot of rainwater, but not much palpable water. In our second design, we would capture rainwater to filter into drinking water. The rainwater is captured in a rooftop cistern and is funneled through an initial filter to get rid of any large contaminations. It is then run through a turbine that is connected to a generator, through a gearbox, to create and store a secondary source of energy. Finally, the water will be directed into a containment chamber where it will be cleaned using ultraviolet purification. The germicide lamp used in this chamber will be powered using the energy produced by the generator.
Design 3: Water powered water desalination
Our third design is a combination of the first two. The basis of it is still vacuum distillation, but to power this water desalination process, we would use the power of the ocean current. To do this, a tower would be placed right off the coast. At the base of the tower would be several paddles that would be aligned against the current of the ocean. As the paddles shift from the motion of the tide and current, the motion would be transferred to the turbines that would be built in the center of the offshore shower.
1 <- Worst………..Best -> 3
Design Matrix Recap:
Starting with the most important, our criteria were Magnitude, Efficiency, Cost, Appropriateness, and Materials. The criteria “Magnitude” refers to how much drinkable water would be produced with the proposed design. We chose Efficiency as the next most important criteria because the design will most likely be utilized in a developing country and should be as simple as possible so that people of a different culture and language can operate it. Cost goes hand-in-hand with Efficiency, so we made it the next most important criteria. It is very important for the design to be cost effective, so that it can be purchased by people of little income or even given away. However, the more efficient a design is, the more cost effective it will probably be so we put efficiency first. By Appropriateness, we meant for the design to use appropriate technology for the area. For example, using rainwater to create electricity in Liberia is more appropriate than it would be in Egypt or Australia because it gets more rainfall. We brought this in 4th because we felt that it was more a criteria of integrity than necessity. Materials is our last criteria because though the design should use local materials that the people are comfortable with, if the same design can be accomplished at a lower cost and higher efficiency with foreign materials, this criteria can be bypassed.
Points for Importance are multiplied by 5, Efficiency by 4, etc. We graded the designs from 1 to 3; 1 being the worst, 3 being the best. For Magnitude, we decided that the Water-Desalination design should get the highest grade. This is because it will most likely produce the most energy and therefore the most drinkable water. Rainwater Purification seemed like the most efficient design because it does not much space or many parts to work. This also gave it the highest score in Cost. However, it did receive the lowest score in “Magnitude” as it will most likely be used on a small scale, where the other designs will be used on a much larger scale. We also gave Rainwater Purification the highest Materials score because its simple parts can mostly be made out of a variety of materials.
Our conclusion shows that the Rainwater Purification design would be the best design. Even though Water-Desalination scored higher in the most important criteria and came in a close second, Rainwater Purification scored highest in every other criterion on the design matrix. Therefore, we will proceed with the Rainwater Purification design.
Expected Cost:
Here is a brief itemized list of the expected costs of a prototype vs. the actual product if it were to be built.
Prototype Price:
Electric Motor $30
PVC pipe $20
Tarp $12
Battery used
Germicide Lamp $10
Total $72
Actual Price:
Electric Motor $150
Copper Piping $40
Rain Cistern $90
Battery $120
Downspout Filter $54
Total $4
Gantt Chart - Thursday, October 28, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment