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Aquaduct Bike Purifies Water As You Pedal
Mike writes "Winner of the '08 Innovate or Die competition sponsored by Google and Specialized, the Aquaduct is a pedal-powered concept vehicle that transports, filters, and stores water. The design has massive implications for communities where safe and secure sources of drinking water are not readily accessible."
What about Beer?
Have they come up with something that will take my beer pee and filter it into water?
I live in Arizona and that would be a great thing to have in the desert.
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Oh Well, Bad Karma and all . . .
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
So, as I sweat and pee, it could collect it, refine it and put it back in my sports bottle. I would imagine it might have a little twang to it if you catch my drift.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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Does the filter remove bacteria from the water? I would think that the filter would become a haven for bacteria to breed propagate, especially when not in use. The main concern in countries where this would be useful are contaminants in the water and bacteria and I don't know of any filter that would effectively eliminate both without costing a fortune to replace every week.
This is more of a question than a criticism, seeing that I don't know if the filter technology exists or not...but a Brita filter isn't going to help the third world very much.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
There are places in the world where people walk for miles so they can carry back heavy vessels of water, which may or may not be contaminated. The roads aren't likely to be much more than cart paths in many places. This aims at looking at that problem from end to end -- it carries the water, filters it for you, and is your round-trip conveyance.
This sounds like, while it's not a finished product, it's a hell of a good idea and a good start.
When you have a better solution that doesn't have as many limitations, get back to us.
I say kudos to the company developing this, and good on 'em for trying to work on this problem.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Nevermind, I get it now. This solves two problems, getting to the water, and purifying it.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I do applaud the effort. However, I know our church funded a mission to take water from a river, pipe it to the village and filter it. Not only did it do what this bike does, it saves about a half dozen villagers from being eaten by alligators. The villagers are happy about this. The alligators less so. The locals did the manual work so that they could handle basic repairs if needed.
I believe the village was called Pittsburgh...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
What, like for small villages in the middle of nowhere without roads?
Yeah, because you can't ride a bicycle off-road. Oh, wait...
While I think this bike is a clear example of form following function, it looks like it has a lot of potential. If they designed it a little differently, it could also be able to carry supplies. Mind you, I'm not factoring in the amount of work required to pedal all that water around.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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Now all they have to worry about is Pirates
It seems nice and all, but the lifestraw [bbc.co.uk] is a much more elegant solution to the problem.
Which problem are you referring to? The problem of needing a drink from polluted water, or the problem of getting water to the residence? From what I read, the aquaduct bike handles not only filtration but transportation of a large amount of water (the water said a family of four needed 20 gallons a day, but they did not specify if that was the capacity of the bike's tank).On the other hand, we have a direct quote from the page you linked:
The LifeStraw isn't going to prevent the long journey, even if it does improve the water they drink"
Paul Hetherington, WaterAid
In addition, the lifestraw does not filter cooking water, so the aquaduct bike will also cut down on your gathering or purchase of fuel for fires (wood or gas).
The lifestraw, while being a useful tool, is hardly a "more elegant" solution then the aquaduct bike.
just one step closer to a stilsuit!
Or for earthquake-prone areas where the roads may be mostly intact, however the drinking water could be bad.
Of course, that would require having the bike beforehand.
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A boil and condense system might be another solution given that it could get away without he need to replace filters. And could also double as a stove.
Permanent magnets and metal coils are all that is needed to generate the heat. It could also have a stationary mode where the back wheels are off the ground so it could serve as a stove and avoid the need to collect/burn wood as well.
I grant that a boil and condense system would be a lot slower and require a heat sink. But then the entire water path could be cleaned by scrubbing and there would be no requirement for filters.
This is a competition to design a green thing that is sponsored by google and specialized, specialized is a BIKE company. How many green products are there that incorporate a bike? Two using the bike to offset car usage and generating power with your pedal power. This is just a novel way to use that power while your still attached to the bike, there is really no reason for this to be actually on the bike at all.
It will have "massive implications"? Yeah right. This is likely to cost quite a bit, and it is going to be far cheaper to have other systems, from boiling the water, to stationary filters, to sterilizing and sealing a well. From what I have seen in Laos (a developing country), the urban population buys bottled water, and the rural population either does nothing, boils water, or the village pitches in to install a sealed well with a hand pump. The later costs on the order of $100-$150 start to finish. Or I suppose you could buy a bicycle to filter water.
However, I must note that the people developing this did not claim "massive implications". Here is a quote from the article:
In its present configuration it is not a feasible solution for most developing communities due to production costs and durability. But in fairness to the IDEO team, they have stated that, "In its current state, the Aquaduct is a prototype aimed squarely at demonstrating a concept and raising awareness around the issues of clean water in developing countries. The Aquaduct team plans to continue the concept's development into an economically and technologically viable solution that addresses challenges such as cost, suitable purification technologies, and the logistics of addressing an issue that [affects] billions."
See issue 14 of Make:
It might be because they don't have maps. At least we're still doing better than The Iraq.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
This could be useful for flooded areas, too. Along the Mississippi, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri rivers, high flooding often means the rivers cover the water treatment and maybe the sewage treatment plants. So some cities go days or weeks without clean tap water during floods like 1993, 1997, and 2008. A few of these things per neighborhood would be a good emergency management step.
Hey, that's my project! Good idea. I'll look into whether they have ideas for something similar that would work well in third world countries. -- Kyle Burchesky H2Opia.org
Here's my idea: bike + gravity-fed-through-filter tank. I still don't get why they need pedal power to push the water through the filter. I mean, they already need to lift the water to pour into the tank in the first place.
You have obviously never heard of Frost Piss, another invention from the wonderful slashdot readers.
Infuriate left and right
This vehicle looks cute, but is completely useless.
The thing works by spending some of the energy of your pedaling for a pump which then pumps the water trough a filter and into the "clean" tank in front.
Here's the thing, if you've got that filter, and can maintain it, you can achieve precisely the same thing by lifting the water you've fetched a single meter off the ground, and letting this fancy thing called *gravity* push it trough the filter.
Mounting a mechanical pump on a bike, as a solution for "how to get water to flow trough a filter" makes it much more complicated, thus more expensive and more likely to go wrong.
The mechanical pump, coupled to the pedaling, *will* go wrong sometimes, it'll also cost money and need maintenance.
Gravity has none of these problems.
...this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62F5qPwXVcA
It met with a big success on the BBC's Dragons Den. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/
You pull or push it instead of riding it.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
There are places in the world where people walk for miles so they can carry back heavy vessels of water
I have it on good authority (Ensign Chekov, in fact) that this device is actually a Russian inwention, to make carrying heavy wessels easier for the typical peasant.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.