By Henry Suarez | Project Contributor
The Solar Distiller Project is a low-cost, high-impact initiative by EcoSwell. Spearheaded by our renewable energy team, the end goal of this project is to provide the foundation for an open-source construction guide that people around the world can easily download, edit, and utilize to their advantage. The guide will include a list of materials, instructions on how to assemble the parts, advice on how to use the final product, and insight on how it relates to scientific research. Therefore, this project will enable everyone that is interested in building a distiller to do so, thus facilitating a vast distribution of knowledge and heavily impacting arid regions throughout the world.
For the past few months, EcoSwell has been redesigning a new model of the solar distiller in hopes of deploying the final prototype to the community of Lobitos. Our director Andrés, who has been leading the project, is very excited about the progress made so far. He has been receiving help from Eric, a physics professor at the University of Lima, for the past three years, and the two of them are continuing to make breakthroughs in the construction of the solar distiller. Eric has been studying solar distillers for 10 years and has been a big help for EcoSwell. Other contributors to the project include Sten, who interned with us from September to November, and Ussaid, who just arrived this past week to volunteer as a renewable energy intern.
The new model (Model 3.2) is currently in progress and will utilize what we learned in our in-house testing and feedback from the previous model. The new model includes altered design, quantity, and position of water containers, which will reduce the cost of materials, increase the efficiency of distillation, and allow the construction of the distiller to be more eco-friendly. We also decided to use a geomembrane, a material that resists UV rays yet increases the rate of water evaporation. Additionally, we screwed the transportation pipe directly onto the container for distilled water, which will eliminate the potential harm of rust and external contamination. Essentially, the new design is easier to maintain, so it will surely generate fewer challenges for the community once it is installed.
Andrés expects that the construction of the newly designed solar distiller will finish this week, but it will require a series of tests before it is deployed into the Lobitos community. Once the prototype is completed, the EcoSwell team will develop an operations plan and determine the scalability of the project. EcoSwell is continuing to work hard to make the Solar Distiller Project possible, and we really appreciate your help.
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