Awards & Nominations
COLMENA has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Nominee
SIRA (INTELLIGENT WATER COLLECTION SYSTEM)
High-Level Project Summary
RESOURCES:Our challenge is how to bring clean water to communities in arid areas with difficult access to water.OBJECTIVES:Identify the regions where such environmental injustice occurs andDesign implementable solutions that allow equitable results.Description of the problem:We consider that at present, our ecosystem has been weakened, due to the hand of man, so that we have fewer and fewer resources. This in turn produced major catastrophes as a consequence of a weakened system, causing a social and environmental injustice due to the fact that people with limited resources were affected in a greater proportion than those with greater capacity to cope with these situations.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our solution is:
In nature, the air always concentrates humidity in a greater or lesser proportion, there are various systems for capturing this to produce water, the disadvantage that they have is that many are fed with electricity generation systems through fossil fuels or are passive systems for capturing water. humidity that depend on the movement of the same.
To solve this problem in an innovative way we devised an alternative system for collecting moisture by means of an air absorption mechanism.
This SIRA system (intelligent water collection system) consists of a main shaft on which fog catchers are mounted which in turn function as centripetal propellers, this attracts an air flow in which the microscopic water drops present in the mist are captured.
The system will be strategically located in areas where the conditions of air circulation are met and that it is an area of a marginalized community, humidity will not be taken as a requirement, since generally these areas have low humidity by default and the differences are minimal.
At first we thought that it should be placed next to wind turbines to take advantage of renewable energies and start the system.
Through a meteorological station, the intelligent system of SIRA will detect the formation of rains and an opening of the upper cover of the device will be generated in order to capture the storm water.
If we analyze the operation of our device according to the arrangement of the mist trapping meshes (an Archimedean screw arrangement with a growing contact area in its blades) we will be able to observe several concepts, among them the variables of pressure, speed and area. . We realize that while there is a widening of the area, the pressure increases and the speed decreases, which would allow us to bring mobility to the mechanism by the same kinetic energy from the air mass. In this way we take advantage of the permeability of the mesh
SIRA contemplates in its design a series of filters and sensors to eliminate and census the polluting particles that may be present in the collected liquid. Then the system directs the filtered liquid in its tanks through pipes at a different level to a series of tanks where the water is made drinkable by means of chemicals. These chemicals are dosed by means of solenoid valves that are controlled automatically, according to the level of purification presented by the water collected from the different devices. In turn, these tanks have sensors for level, temperature, pH, purification, particles per million that collect information that is sent through LoRa technology (Long Range, low consumption) from the control center located in the tanks to a device server in the community. The SIRA system communicates with the community through HMI (Human Machine Interface) in order to report failures and maintenance.
The air flow is controlled by a closed loop control system in which it is sought to optimize the capture of water through the membranes by comparing the amount of water extracted with the air flow of the system.
New control methods allow us to optimize the prediction of the system by analyzing the data over time from the own system and from other machines, supported by an artificial intelligence algorithm.
Depending on the size of the collector and the humidity of the environment will be the amount of water that will be collected, because we are dealing with a new concept that links the active air flow contrary to the system that was seen in Peru which is passive, as an auto condenser of humidity. It is that empirical tests are needed to calculate the amount of water collected.
Space Agency Data
https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?p=C1327985579-ASF&pg[0][v]=f&pg[0][gsk]=-start_date&fst0=Terrestrial%20Hydrosphere&fs11=Electrical%20Conductivity&fsm1=Soils&fst1=Agriculture&fs12=Soil%20Moisture/Water%20Content&fs22=Soil%20Moisture&fsm2=Soils&fst2=Agriculture&m=-16.038585144480123!-69.92578125!3!1!0!0%2C2
Hackathon Journey
How would you describe your experience with Space Apps? What did you learn?
Our experience in space apps has been very satisfactory, we have managed to connect with the members of our team obtaining the greatest joint benefit, because each of the team members is from a different area, which allowed a greater understanding and sharing of each of the topics.
What inspired your team to choose this challenge?
What inspired us to choose this challenge was that it is a problem that affects us, that moves us because it is something extremely important one cannot imagine without water to survive.
It is a problem that is closely seen in our case because in our province it is an extremely scarce resource. That is why we ended up deciding on this project.
These initiatives promote spaces where curious minds can meet and empower themselves. Generally, great advances require leaps of innovation and rapid experimentation of permanent evolution, says the representative in Catamarca of this project. The sense of competence contributes to the dynamics by presenting horizons where time and resource constraints favor creative thinking. In these spaces, what is recognized is the ability to solve problems, regardless of age, ethnicity, creed, credentials, among others.
References
.https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?p=C1327985579-ASF&pg[0][v]=f&pg[0][gsk]=-start_date&fst0=Terrestrial%20Hydrosphere&fs11=Electrical%20Conductivity&fsm1=Soils&fst1=Agriculture&fs12=Soil%20Moisture/Water%20Content&fs22=Soil%20Moisture&fsm2=Soils&fst2=Agriculture&m=-16.038585144480123!-69.92578125!3!1!0!0%2C2
Tags
#spaceappscta #spaceaps #nasa #water #energy
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.