Community invention of two male students in coastal areas
(Baonghean) - Seeing that fishermen in the village often lack fresh water during their daily fishing trips, two middle school students in Dien Chau district cherished the idea of making a fresh water distiller using only simple tools.
The product of distilling salt water into fresh water by Ngo Thanh Dat and Nguyen Tien Dung (both 15 years old), 9th grade students of Dien Hai Secondary School (Dien Chau), has won many awards, most recently the First Prize in the Youth and Children's Creativity Contest organized by the Nghe An Union of Science and Technology Associations, the Department of Education and Training, the Department of Science and Technology, and the Provincial Youth Union.
Living together in a poor coastal village in Dien Hai commune, Dat and Dung often witnessed people struggling due to lack of fresh water. Dat and Dung cherished the idea of inventing a machine that could distill saltwater into fresh water for fishermen to use right on the boat. Applying the knowledge they learned at school, Dat and Dung began to try to heat seawater, through the evaporation process according to the principle of liquid evaporation to get fresh water.
Under the guidance of Mr. Nguyen Dinh Hoa - Physics teacher, Dien Hai Secondary School, the two male students sketched out the operating diagram of the device. Once the diagram was completed, Mr. Hoa guided the two students on how to make the devices in stages. In the following days, the three teachers and students experimented and tested dozens of times on the beach to distill seawater into fresh water. "We mainly collected the tools at home, most of them were scrap. It took us nearly 3 months to finish this machine" - Dat said.
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| Ngo Thanh Dat introduces a model of a machine to distill fresh water from salt water. Photo: Tien Hung |
Introducing the machine's operation, Dat said that when pouring seawater into the thermos, the water will flow down the copper tubes placed under the glass panels, solar radiation shines on the copper tubes, heating the water, creating a convection circle of liquid in the tube. Hot water goes up, and cold water goes down. This process happens continuously... causing the temperature of the water in the thermos to continuously increase. Through the automatic thermostat valve set at 600 degrees Celsius, the valve automatically discharges water into the hot chamber of the distillation tank. When sunlight shines through the converging lens made of water, it becomes a converging beam of light shining into the hot chamber, combined with the phenomenon of solar radiation, so the temperature of the seawater in the hot chamber continues to increase.
“Through the rotating system, the surface area of the water in the hot chamber increases, water does not only evaporate on the open surface but also evaporates in the water that sticks to the mesh of the rotating machine. Therefore, the evaporation rate of water is faster. At this time, thanks to the steam extractor, hot steam is sucked from the hot chamber to the cold chamber through the copper pipe. When the hot steam goes to the cold chamber and meets the cold, it condenses to create fresh water. When the hot water in the thermos is discharged, pump 1 operates and pumps the heated water from the cold tank of the distillation system to the thermos tank and continues the water distillation cycle” - Dat said and said that each day the machine can distill nearly 10 liters of water, enough for the members on a train.
The product is made from easy-to-find, low-cost, easy-to-manufacture raw materials, has the ability to be widely applied, and is environmentally friendly. Also because the system operates continuously, in a closed cycle, it can operate for many hours a day. People are completely proactive in the source of clean water for daily life and production. With the current model weighing about 20kg, every 10 liters of seawater after distillation will give about 6 liters of fresh water.
With this product, Dat and Dung won the Encouragement Prize in the National Science and Technology Innovation Competition 2016-2017. Meanwhile, in the district and provincial competitions, Dung and Dat both won the First Prize. Mr. Vo Hong Son - Principal of Dien Hai Secondary School said that the school is very proud of the creative products of the students. The school also creates the best conditions to accompany teachers and students to stimulate creative thinking in each student.
| Dien Hai Secondary School is the only school in the country to win the National Science and Technology Innovation Competition for 3 consecutive years. Although they do not have good conditions for research, with their passion, students of Dien Hai Secondary School have created unique and useful inventions. These initiatives all come from the difficult reality of the people in the coastal area of Dien Hai. Before Dat and Dung's products, in the past 2 school years, Dien Hai Secondary School also had two products: "Exploiting solar energy with external combustion engines" by Dau Van Thuan and Nguyen Ngoc Chinh, which won second prize, and the product "Exploiting green energy to serve people in coastal areas" by Le Minh Hoang and Nguyen Xuan Ky, which also won an Encouragement prize at the National Science and Technology Innovation Competition. |
Tien Hung
