The water tasted good!

I wanted to make one of those water cones, so i went to ikea and bought a glass bowl, used the top of skillet pan, traped the salt water inside, and voila!

Desalination

My first try at desalination involved the use of electricity and a stovetop. I tied a small glass to the inside of a lid and put it on a pot of salt water. I boiled the water three different times but each time the glass fell off the lid either while boiling or as I was trying to take it out.

On my next try, I opted for candles as a heat source instead of electricity. I bought a teapot and glass jar from Savers and a cord to attach the two. I put four candles beneath the teapot and the glass jar was placed in a small container of ice. I let the candles burn for three hours and the entire surface of the teapot was hot but no water was in the glass jar. I replaced the candles and let them burn for another three hours, but still no water. Maybe there was too much water to boil or evaporate. Maybe the teapot, hose, jar, or connections weren’t airtight. There are many possibilities as to why this system didn’t work.

I attempted desalination again with the same idea as my first try, but I replaced the small glass with a bowl about the size of the lid. I thought this would gather more of the condensation than the small cup and would be more likely to stay in place. It did stay in place, but it didn’t gather any water.

My first attempt at desalting water

My first attempt at desalting water did not prove successful. I tried warming water on the stovetop with a lid to capture condensation.

I did, in fact begin to get some condensation.
But I heated the water too quickly and soon the shot glass shattered:
In order to make this successful, the water will need to be heated more slowly. I would also like to do this using solar power instead of stove top.

Not as easy as it sounds; Clarification of water, and use of solar panels.

Miranda, Jeremy, Nick and I quickly discovered that anything can be stolen.

We started out our experiment by placing a kettle on concrete and a ceramic bowl on the lawn. Each container had a smaller one inside providing a place for the saltwater to heat up and turn in to vapor. The kettle on the sidewalk had a plastic top, where the ceramic bowl had a glass cover. We noticed soon after placing them in the direct sunlight that the container with the glass cover started condensing its vapor to water more quickly.

As the time passed we set a note next to the experiment explaining our situation and asking for people to leave them alone. To our complete surprise someone/something came by and snatched our bowls, our experiment!! We were in utter disbelief; this ended our first round of experimentation.










Bye bye bowls.

But, carry on we must.

We tried warming a kettle on a low heat in the oven, with the same idea. Soon we realized that if any water were to condense and drip down would be fizzled up and leave behind only salt residue.

To the next idea: We tried to bring water to a higher temperature on the stove top, pour it into a small cup and place a chilled glass over it. All in hopes that the steam rising from the heated water would condense quickly when it reached the chilled glass. Although it was a good idea the process was painstakingly slow.

One of the last ideas we had was to cover the little kettle we were using to heat the salt water on the stove and harvest the condensation being produced inside the glass lid. Simmering the water on a low heat provided a warm but not scorching home for water condensation. About every minute we tilted the lid and poured the clarified water into a dish. This final experiment turned out to be the most successful process recovering around one fourth of a cup of fresh water for every cup of salt water, per hour.



Solar Panel Project:

This one was a duzey. Our first attempt at conducting solar energy consisted of three solar panels with inter-twisted wires and a small moter.
Left it alone for a while. Nothing happened.

We opened and destroyed many items durring this process. They include a Hannah Montana keyboard, a pair of headphones, a disposable camera, heat conductors, an iPod, and other miscellaneous objects.

I regret to inform you that we did not notice any sign of solar current. Mission Failed.

We will try again to find something requiring a lower voltage or by using solar powers that provide more voltage.

My Attempt at drinking salt water.

I posted my process online, so here is a link to my pdf if you want to check it out. It might take a second to load. It was a interesting night of attempts, but the one I documented is the one that worked best. A long slow process, but clean. 

Saltwater  

my little water experiment!

So last night I discovered how epic a journey it is to take water from a salty gross non-drinkable form and try (key word try) to make it drinkable and remove the salt...

After three different set ups, (only ended up taking pictures of the first and the last...sorry) I managed to actually collect water in the collecting water pot...not much, technically not enough...but it worked and that's what counted. below you will find the amusing pictures!

























Gotta say, the water tasted like duct tape...Probably ingested some not so great toxins in that little sip...ick. but we did it. we collected water and that's what counts, right? Essentially the system is a very low tech, very inefficient water still. On the right you have the brine water boiling on the stove and on the left you have a pot to collect the water vapor. to make the water vapor condense we surrounded the collecting pot with cold water. between the two pots there is a makeshift enclosed path to guide the water vapor to the collecting pot while it cools down and returns to the state of being like water. This system was not perfect (obviously...) lots of steam escaped and there was not a lot of return on the water. I'd say I filled the cup about a third or half the way. I did take a sip...would not recommend it...distilled duct tape in a cup...not good...at all.

But this was fun, very challenging!

Water, Water...Very Little!

THE WATER FILTER PROJECT

If 2% of the earth’s water is fresh and we’re running out of that fresh water, the obvious answer is to find a way to turn the 98% of water that is salty into fresh. If removing the salt is all that is necessary, then experimentation for filtering is an obvious answer. So despite the fact that this has probably been done several times over, I’m going to do just that and filter my experimental fresh water with known means. If anything, understanding the process will only leave room for the me or other who are doing the same to suggest better ways to make the process either more cost-effective or incapable of consuming other needed resources. The definite result is that this project will demonstrate the importance of educating the new generation to think this way.
The goal here is to advance upon a simple grade-school science project in order to make is not only easier, but to provide larger scale ideas. The idea is just trapping boiling water, therefore I’m going to use a simple device like a tea pot to aim the evaporating water that allows the trapped condensing water to flow down into a glass that does not also sit in the boiling water. I fear the glass might break, or I might only have plastic.

After the experiment this is the verdict: this process is very inefficient. For the 2 cups of water I poured into the pan around the bowl, I only received about a spoonful of fresh water. I can imagine that if this process were imagined in upscaled proportions that it would cost far too much to execute this process soon. It may even cost too much to experiment with. The concensus is that we may need to cut costs elsewhere to make it happen. How else will we maintain fresh water?