Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Use of Mechanical Vapor Compression (MVC) System for Development of Water Resources in Rural Areas of Developing Countries
EPA Grant Number: SU834712Title: Use of Mechanical Vapor Compression (MVC) System for Development of Water Resources in Rural Areas of Developing Countries
Investigators: Ganesan, Kumar , Clark, Casey , Kannawin, Jon , Webb, Justin , Gillespie, Karen , Moon, Laura
Institution: Montana Tech of the University of Montana
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: I
Project Period: August 15, 2010 through August 14, 2011
Project Amount: $9,794
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (2010) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development , P3 Challenge Area - Air Quality , P3 Challenge Area - Safe and Sustainable Water Resources , P3 Awards , Sustainable and Healthy Communities
Objective:
Water is the most important resource for any society around the world. Communities use water resources for agricultural, industrial, domestic, and other purposes, but most importantly, they depend on water resources for their drinking water. Currently, there are many rural communities, specifically in developing countries, that do not have access to a clean supply of drinking water due to cost and location. A solution to bring clean drinking water to some of these communities involves treating otherwise unusable water such as brackish or mineralized water.
This project involved the research and development of an innovative and sustainable technology that is not only able to treat the brackish groundwater, but also provides benefits to people, prosperity, and the planet. The technology developed is a wind-driven mechanical vapor extraction (MVE) system powered solely by wind and solar energy. The designed MVE system utilizes wind power to mechanically drive the system and utilizes solar power to pre-heat the water. The overall goal of the project is to develop and construct a wind driven MVE system to demonstrate that the technology can treat brackish groundwater to clean drinking water quality standards for regions of the world where there are not enough high-quality water resources available.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
The outcome of this project is the construction of a bench scale system that consists of three components: the vapor evaporation chamber, two flatplate solar water heaters, and one vertical axis windmill (VAW). During the start of the process, the mechanical energy of the windmill drives both a vacuum pump that creates a vacuum in the evaporation chamber and a peristaltic pump that pumps a pre-mixed brackish water solution from a reservoir through two flat-plate solar water heaters connected in series. The brackish water then enters the evaporation chamber, which is under negative pressure to increase the evaporation rate of the clean water vapor. Inside the evaporation chamber clean water vapor is evaporated, leaving a concentrated brine waste solution that is later recycled through the two flat-plate solar water heaters and back to the evaporation chamber. This allows for the brackish water to be re-heated to further assist in the evaporation process. The clean water vapor along with air is then pulled through a copper coil submerged in the brackish water reservoir where it condenses and collects in a water trap.
The outcome of the project was to show that the constructed MVE system is a sustainable solution to water scarcity in rural communities of developing countries. This outcome was proved by (1) designing and testing an MVE system that is able to remove most contaminants (e.g., dissolved solids, bacteria, etc) from the brackish groundwater with the exception of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and (2) constructing both a VAW to harness the available wind energy and an interface system to transfer the captured wind power and mechanically drive the MVE system.
Conclusions:
Based on the outcomes and research, the developed MVE system will improve the health of the people in the community by providing clean drinking water, will improve the prosperity of the community by stimulating the development of the community, and will improve the environment by eliminating the need for fossil fuels to provide clean drinking water to the community.
Supplemental Keywords:
environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, Montana, Ethiopia, desalination, conservation, alternative energy, sustainable technologyThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.