Work Night on Evaporator 4.19.18

Work Night on Evaporator

Date: 4.19.18
Location: Logan HS
Time: 2.5 hours
Goal: Seal up PVC pipes, reservoirs and work on surface tension vibration units.
Students: Austin and Dom

Tonight we worked on cementing up PVC pipes to seal them up for future water tests. We also had to solder the extension wires on to the new cell phone vibration motors we purchased to decrease the surface tension of the radiators on the condenser side of the DM. These motors proved difficult to solder because of the small diameter of the wire and we ended up losing one of them.

After each one was soldered they were checked with a 3v power supply to make sure they were functional. We know from testing they will cause a vibration on the radiators, we don't know if it is enough to break the surface tension.

Alex also started work on the fan motor assembly. We are still working out the details of this, but we  want a support inside the pipe so fan blades do not hit the inside of the pipe. We used a plastic mesh and epoxy for this.

Our goal next week is to do a test on the evaporator side of the DM. We should have the peltier wired in allow us to see what temp we can get the evaporator to.

Note: We did at test of the radiator vibration system the next day and it seemed to work! A video is posted below for you to view.

Alex fitting the plastic mesh to support the fan motor.

We used Marine epoxy to fill in a center cell. This will eventually be drilled out
to support the fan shaft.

Dom cementing the PVC pipe lower drain assembly.

Dom placing the submersible pump in the bottom of the evaporator tank.

This is one of the micro vibration motors that they use in cellphones. We decided to try some of these
to vibrate the water drops.

This is one of the micro vibration motors after some mistakes soldering and experimenting with the best
way to support the wires. We will have to order another one.

Austin with one of the micro vibration motors and he soldered wire extension.
They are heat shrinked twice to help support and improve waterproofing.

Dry testing the micro vibration motors to make sure they will vibrate the surface.
They do, in fact you can even feel the support structure vibrating.

This is a (somewhat blurry) video of our micro vibration motor test the next day. We poured some water over the radiators then angled the condensor unit to simulate its position in the tank. As you can see, the water droplets were releasing and dripping off. We experimented with a motor delay (10 sec. on 10 sec. off) and had mixed results. We also tested a 3 sec. on 3 sec. off burst and had better result. A 555 timer circuit is being design for this application.

Progress shown on pump installation and reservoir tanks installed.