Things have been going! I was able to do the function test, and while it was a fail-forward I was able to get a ton of great data and confirmed many of my processes. Rather than wait outside for a warm, sunny day, I took the power of the sun into my own hands and set up a heat lamp. The few problems I found will be easily solved in the MkII version, and I’m ready to get started on it.
Test Photos
My test setup looked like something out of American Psycho
Sample Photos
Control “Pre-filter” water
Sample after just mechanical filtration
Note: Even though post-filtration water looks clean, it still contains soap, oil, salt, and other dissolved materials that would need to be removed using the distillation. This also didn’t happen this time in any amount usable for testing, so there are no post-test photos.
For a bit more detail: The evaporation, condensation and filtration parts of the project worked perfectly, however the clean water collection didn’t work up to my standards, hence “fail-forward”. I found that the method I was using to collect the water was pretty inefficient, and there were more than a few leaks. I’m changing my collection method from inside-the-source to outside-the-source to solve both. Otherwise, I’ve started working on the 3D models for the bespoke parts and am still looking for a cost-effective way to test the samples reliably.