| Aquaduct Improves Bicycle’s Brilliance |
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| Written by Joshua Liberles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 21 February 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||
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In addition to propelling the vehicle, pedaling the bike also sucks water from the rear tank, through an internal filtration system, and into a clean drinking water reservoir. The bike’s drive train can be disengaged while parked, and the Aquaduct used as a stationary filtration device. Five California-based design students built the Aquaduct for rural, third-world countries where many people either walk for miles or use a motorized vehicle to retrieve water, and then use up time and energy to boil the water. The Aquaduct provides the transportation sans fossil fuel, eliminates the need for wood or other fuels to heat the water, and is emissions free. Comments (10)
Terra
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Amazing idea, but it says the tank is "capable of holding enough water for a family's daily use". It looks like it's only a gallon, though. I doubt that's enough for a medium or large-sized family in a hot climate, really. |
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Actually the internal tank is much bigger than that. The external tank (perhaps that's what your commenting on?), mounted by the handlebars, contains the purified water. That's only a couple of gallons. So, once you arrive at the destination, if you want more purified water, you engage the clutch and pedal some more through the system. |
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Great idea, hope it helps. |
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I really don't get the logic here, first of all, you talk about 20 galons/day for a family, which means about 72 liters, the tank in the back of the bike does not look more than a 30-35 liter to me, am I wrong? Also, they talk about a filter in this video, but where does the filter come from? Do they need to purchase filters like the ones we use in our extremely expensive water judge filters? Because if this is the case, then for those people who live on $1/day, this can be an impossible cost and they end up just using the bike for transportation. Please correct me if I am wrong? |
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My thoughts exactly Farhad. Furthermore, can the plastic casing be opened easily for servicing if the pump gets blocked, or even if the chain falls off? It looks nice, but sometimes aesthetic design can get in the way of a product's practicality. I hope I'm wrong though, because it's a great idea. |
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You know, its funny how such an idea gets shot down by people so quickly.. whats with people anyway?? its an idea to help the world and they immediately start finding all the negatives... heres an idea.. work with the designers to come up with a better design or shut up and let them do their part in the grand scheme of things. |
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I would suggest that the tank at the rear of the tricycle be fitted out with two collapsable 20 litre Pods(Portable On Demand Storage),so as the original water from one Pod,that has already been filtered,would under suction, return to the second Pod. By the way it shouldn´t be taken for granted that the water being transported would necesarily be contaminated. This technology could also be used to create Hydrogen, or??  |
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Djarada, there isn't enough power available from the human body to produce a useful quantity of hydrogen. But the idea of using equal sized collapsible pods with water flowing from one to the other, thereby taking up the same space, is ingenious. This, Thomas, is exactly why it is important to be critical - it makes people think that extra bit harder and as a result the best solutions to the criticisms are realised. |
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Having worked in some 3rd World countries on humanitariam relief, I'd agree with Djarada. You'll often find a community well from which everyone draws their water. Not necessarily contaminated, but still must be transported. If you used two equal size rear mounted pods for cycling water, you would effectively cut capacity in half. Rather, I'd suggest the rear container be as large as possible (consider what a bike can carry and a human can move) and the filtration if required can happen on arrival as the tranmission can be disengaged to only power the pump and filtration. Filtered output could be distributed to containers on site. |
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I'd also mold the top of the rear deck to add a cargo shelf to enhance carrying capacity of hard goods and increase flexibility. |
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