DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF PORTABLE SOLAR

POWERED AUTOMATIC WATER DISPENSER FOR

_____________________

A Project Study Presented To

In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirement for the Degree
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering

_____________________
By

CECILIO, Harlyn Bojoy O.

October 2021
 ABSTRACT

Water covers over 71 percent of the earth's surface, but just 2.5 percent of it is drinkable.

As a result of population growth, pollution, and climate change, we are predicted to face

perpetual water shortages by 2025 and an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued

by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world’s population living in water-stressed regions

(United Nations Water Program, 2014).

Desalination is a method of extracting minerals from saline water. It is the process of

removing salt from water in order to make it drinkable. The goal of desalination is to provide

freshwater for human consumption at a low cost. Desalination, along with reused wastewater, is

one of the few rainfall-independent water resources. A reverse osmosis system, which is used in

the proposed model, removes sediment and chlorine from water with a pre-filter before forcing

water through a semipermeable membrane to remove dissolved solids.

Thus, this study focuses on developing a portable solar powered water dispenser for

seawater desalination along with a water purifier to attempt to fix the water problem with a smart

innovative approach.

The goal of this project is to promote and facilitate innovation and to take a step toward a

future of convenience and technological advancement. Furthermore, the specifics of this project

will be discussed throughout the research pages.

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Water covers over 71 percent of the earth's surface, but just 2.5 percent of it is drinkable.

As a result of population growth, pollution, and climate change, we are predicted to face

perpetual water shortages by 2025 and an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued

by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world’s population living in water-stressed regions

(United Nations Water Program, 2014). There are already minor disagreements among nations

and states about how to share river water. Humans clearly waste a lot of drinking water due to

our gross negligence.

Access to drinking water quality is becoming limited as a result of excessive use of

freshwater resources in comparison to their renewability, the constant deterioration of

groundwater and surface water quality, and recent climate change, including in new areas where

water supply was not a critical problem. In the Philippines, nearly 5 million people rely on

unsafe and unsustainable water sources, and 9 million lack access to improved sanitation.

Despite its growing economy, the Philippines faces significant challenges when it comes to

access to water and sanitation. Water treatment or desalination is one solution to this problem, as
it can provide suitable water quality for crop irrigation, industry, and household use. There are

many desalination methods available today, but they are either expensive or inefficient.

Desalination is a method of extracting minerals from saline water. It is the process of

removing salt from water in order to make it drinkable. The goal of desalination is to provide

freshwater for human consumption at a low cost. Desalination, along with reused wastewater, is

one of the few rainfall-independent water resources. Desalination remains an expensive method

of obtaining freshwater. Thermal distillation and reverse osmosis are two of the primary methods

for desalinating saltwater. A reverse osmosis system, which is used in the proposed model,

removes sediment and chlorine from water with a pre-filter before forcing water through a

semipermeable membrane to remove dissolved solids.

Renewable energy and desalination are distinct technologies that can be combined in a

variety of ways. Successful integrated designs rely on the collaborative efforts of experts from

two distinct fields – renewable energy and desalination. Energy generated on-site from locally

available renewable energy sources can help the desalination process. This energy can be

generated in a variety of ways, including heat, electricity, and mechanical energy.

Thus, this study focuses on developing a portable solar powered water dispenser

for seawater desalination along with a water purifier to attempt to fix the water problem with a

smart innovative approach.

Objectives of the Study

1. To design and fabricate a portable solar powered water dispenser for seawater
desalination.
 2. To determine the performance of the machine in terms of efficiency and machine

capacity.

3. To develop an affordable portable water system.

4. To desalinate brackish water using solar energy at seashores, that allows people to

have drinkable water.

5. To utilize the inherently available solar energy to obtain consumable water from

oceans and polluted lakes where the water is unfit to drink.

Significance of the Study

The study's findings are significant in the following ways:

Coastal Community. This will provide coastal settlers with safe and drinkable water.

Entrepreneur. This will be a valuable commodity for entrepreneurs looking to expand their

current business. Entrepreneurs can improve the products they sell and easily create new

products to sell.

Water Advocacy Groups. This will assist these organizations in making clean, sustainable

water a global reality.

Mechanical Engineering Students. This will give them the knowledge to develop innovative

machines and modify existing ones. Their product design skills and creativity will be honed,

inspiring them to become entrepreneurs in the future.

Future Researchers. This study will serve as a foundation for future researchers who will be

investigating the same topic.

Desalination. The process of removing dissolved salts from seawater and, in some cases,

brackish inland seawaters, highly mineralized groundwaters and municipal wastewaters.

Reverse Osmosis. A pressure is applied to the solution on the side of the membrane with the

lower solvent concentration.

Solar Power. The conversion of solar energy into thermal or electrical energy.

Water Dispenser. A water-dispensing device. It is used to make drinking water more accessible.

Water Purification. A process of removing unwanted chemical compounds, organic and

inorganic materials, and biological contaminants from water.

Scope and Delimitation of the Study

This study was conducted to design and fabricate a Portable Solar Powered Automatic

Water Dispenser for Seawater Desalination. This machine will be innovated based on the present

portable desalination system in the industry and automated using Arduino. A portable type

desalination system with a water pump, water tank, and water purifier. This machine has

approximate dimensions of 650mm x 400mm x 550mm and powered by solar energy. The

materials used in the machine's construction were chosen based on their availability in the local

market and the affordability of the price that the researchers could afford. In addition, the

machine will become a convenient designed to be operated.

Figure 1. Schema for the Conceptualization of the Study

researchers believe that this is the most efficient method of achieving the desired results. The

research will begin with data collection. In this section, the researchers will gather information

about the materials to be used as well as the prices associated with them. This is also where the

researchers will gather their ideas for the Portable Solar Powered Automatic Water Dispenser for

Seawater Desalination’s development. The design comes next. It is here that the machine will be

designed using CAD software, the Autodesk Fusion 360. This is also the process at which the

researchers will decide what materials to use in relation to the cost. The prototype fabrication

stage comes after the design stage. This entails assembling the parts of the Portable Solar

Powered Automatic Water Dispenser for Seawater Desalination machine. When the product has

already been manufactured, a performance evaluation must be carried out. This is carried out

during the testing phase. The researchers must have a set of parameters to determine whether the

prototype passes or fails. If it fails, the prototype will be redesigned until it works properly.

Finally, if the Portable Solar Powered Automatic Water Dispenser for Seawater Desalination

machine passed the performance evaluation, the prototype is ready for presentation.
 CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter discusses the literature and studies that are relevant to the current
study.

Related Literature

According with Mariem and Lotfi (2014), the power of desalination systems

powered by Renewable Energy Sources (RES) systems has been increasing, particularly in the

last decade. This paper is about modeling and controlling a desalination unit using reverse

osmosis-based solar energy. Photovoltaic panels, electrical converters, batteries, and a

desalination unit serve as the load in the system. This isolated system's dynamic modeling of

various components is presented. Control loops are developed to ensure the balance of

consumption and production, as well as the proper operation of the unit. The simulation results

demonstrated that the proposed hybrid power system works. Control loops are developed to

ensure the balance of consumption and production, as well as the proper operation of the unit.

According to the simulation results, the proposed hybrid power system with control loops

operates efficiently under load power demand variations.

The James Dyson Award was recently given to a team of Malaysian designers for

their WaterPod sustainable desalination pod concept, which uses solar distillation to convert
seawater into drinkable water. The WaterPod, created by Bennie Beh Hue May, Yap Chun Yoon,

and Loo Xin Yang, is designed to float at sea and thus accessible to sea nomads. It operates on a

self-cleaning solar desalination system that absorbs seawater from beneath and transports it to

the black fabric placed on top of the aluminum plate via a wick structure. Seawater evaporates

from the fabric onto the dome cover as sunlight passes through the transparent cover. The

desalination pod will be a low-cost alternative to existing desalination plants. To combat plastic

pollution, the proposed full-scale WaterPods would be made of recycled plastic waste collected

from the oceans. The inner dome is filled with expanded polyurethane foam for thermal

insulation and flotation enhancement, while the bottom dome is filled with cement for weight

stability. This project study, inspire the researchers, to create a smart innovative machine that

will also people accessing clean and sustainable water.

A paper titled "Solar Stills for Desalination of Water in Rural Households"

published by "International Journal of Environment and Sustainability" enlightened the

researchers with various Solar Still techniques that were very easy to construct from locally

available materials, had no operation cost, and required no hard maintenance. These Solar Stills

would have assisted the people in obtaining clean water for their daily needs. There are several

types of solar stills, including horizontal and inclined basin solar stills, as well as regenerative

effect, vertical, and spherical condensing solar stills.

A paper titled "Design, Construction, and Evaluation of a Multi Layered Solar

Distillation Prototype" published by "BioResource and Agricultural Engineering Department

California Polytechnic State University" introduced the researchers to the combination that we

were looking for. They researched each design that combined Solar Stills and an energy
recycling unit, known as a Multistage Still. The researchers got the idea for their project model

from this paper.

Related Studies

Based on a "SciVersa ScienceDirect" research paper titled "Solar Energy for Water

Desalination." The researchers came up with the idea of using solar energy to accomplish our

ultimate goal of producing fresh water. They investigated various methods for producing potable

water using Desalination Technologies. Reverse Osmosis, Multistage Flash Distillation, and

Multi-Effect Distillation are the most commonly used technologies. Desalination will also be a

huge success in areas that receive a lot of solar radiation, according to the researchers. They

learned about various technologies such as Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and Photovoltaic

(PV). They are primarily involved in Concentrating Solar Power, which involves concentrating

solar radiations to obtain the desired output. These technologies include the Parabolic Trough,

the Linear Fresnel reflector system, and the Central Tower receiver. The main point that we

investigated is that the solution is found in the combination. Combination that results in a green

future with a low-cost impact.

A research report on desalination in Australia published by Jomo Kenyatta

University of Agriculture and Technology drew the researchers' attention to the lack of other

sustainable water sources due to future population growth. It emphasized Australia's water

scarcity as a result of less rainfall, which drained the majority of the country's water harvesting

units. Desalination will be the best option for meeting people's domestic, public, and industrial

needs.
 According to the research paper titled "Design, Fabrication, and Working of Solar

Distillation System" published in the "International Journal of Advanced Information in

Engineering Technology," it gave the researchers an idea of how the system looks and how it

works, and it forced us to think about ways to make it easier.

Furthermore, researchers from the EU-funded W20 project have developed

Wave2O, the world's first wave-driven desalination system, as an off-grid innovative solution.

The new system can be deployed quickly, operates completely off-grid, and provides large

amounts of fresh water at a low cost. The technology harnesses the power of the ocean waves, a

consistent and inexhaustible source of renewable energy.

Moreover, Henry Glogau, a New Zealand-based designer, created the Solar

Desalination Skylight, a device that uses seawater to generate natural ambient light, drinking

water, and energy from the remaining sea salt. The Solar Desalination Skylight works by

evaporating seawater using the sun's free and abundant energy. During the day, seawater is piped

into the bowl-shaped Skylight, where the sun's energy is used to light homes at night and distill

the salty seawater into drinking water. The device owner can then extract drinking water from a

tap at the Skylight base. During the night, the leftover salt brine generates an electric charge that

powers a diffused light.

The related literature and studies mentioned in this chapter aided the researchers in

visualizing the variables involved in the design, fabrication, and performance of the Portable

Solar Powered Automatic Water Dispenser for Seawater Desalination.