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1st Project Introduction
Instrumentation and feedback control of water flow rate is to be implemented in this project. The objective of the project is to effectively use solar energy to produce clean and distilled water. Fig. 1 shows an illustration of the system. A special chimney is employed to ventilate warm and humid air to harvest moisture for clean water. The chimney is externally cooled by the feeding water (or water to be reclaimed), and at the internal surface it has grooves for enhanced condensation heat transfer between the moisture and the internal surface. The chimney is 3D printed in order to fabricate the complicate structure. The system is in a small scale for concept proof, to be installed on campus at the rooftop of AME building.
Instrumentation and feedback control
Optimized operation of the system needs feedback control of the flow rate of the feeding water based on data of temperature, and humidity measured. For example, the flow controller allows a small amount of water to pass and make sure the water temperature at the flow controller is sufficiently high. The disk valve at the top of the chimney is closed if the humidity of the air is less than 100%. When the system operates in a steady state, the feed water flow rate will be about the same as that of the collected clean water.
2nd Project Introduction
A solar stove with concentrated sunlight by Fresnel lens is under development (Fig. 2). Feedback control is needed to track the sunlight and also to shield the sunlight (at top surface of the lens) in case the stove temperature is overshot. The following figure shows the concept. While there are senior students working on a design project to build such a system with a lens of 1.1m by 1.1 m, Dr. Li is interested in making a larger one at about 1.5m by 1.5m. Internship students can also brainstorm applications of the system for other application such as producing fuels, process ceramics, etc.