Posted by boatman on May 30, 2013 in Blog | 0 comments
The carbon fibre rotor has a low inertia allowing it to speed up & down, following the wind speed and garnering the maximum amount of power from the sky.
The churn is a Joule heater in polycarbonate, impervious to warm brine. It has a cubic characteristic like the wind turbine, so once matched mirrors it. It has a nil power draw at start-up to allow the turbine to catch the gust.
As the design speed is approached, centrifugal actuators dump the lift / drive.
Patent 201110222 ‘Water boatman’ was awarded on 12/8/11 .
Description:
‘Water boatman is a unit to make fresh water from sea water or dirty rivers – powered by the current.
A barge is tied in the sea/river & has under it a vertical axis water turbine. This drives a shaft up into the barge which drives a water brake which heats the water. The hot water – all in a box of foot thick expanded polystyrene or similar, gives off vapour. This fills the box at the top of which is a condenser.’
This is now of PVC tube, through which cold brine flows to condense the vapour which runs down to a drip tray and out. On exit it is warm so up the middle of the exit pipe runs a smaller one carrying cold brine to the sump. It is heated by the hot distillate leaving and is so preheated – the distillate leaves cold.
Silmilarly hyper saline very dirty water leaves continuously through a similar tube:in:tube heat exchanger – leaving cold and keeping all heat in the insulated still.
Fresh water is stored in Water boatmman’s hull to await collection – or pumped ashore by a pump driven by the Wind/ Water turbines.
Both turbines work on the same shaft through a mechanism that accepts power from either end – leaving the other free=wheeling.