Construction
The original method was to tap two threads in the pot and attach them with two threaded pipes, one will attach it with heating pipe and the other will be an outlet for the water after the condensation. The pot was too thin to handle any type of machining of welding; therefore, the threads were replaced with bulkhead pipe fittings. All the parts that constructed or purchased were supposed to be stainless-steel, but stainless-steel was too expensive for some parts and some of which take weeks to arrive. An example for that is bulkhead pipe fittings. The cost of it for stainless steel was over 100$ and 2 of them were needed. They were both replaced with bulkhead plastic pipe fittings as they would both serve the same purpose for a lot less cost without any downgrading in quality. The pot was ordered online, and the lid was supposed to be cut to turn into a cone. The lid had two handles in it and it would be too time consuming to cut the handles. In addition to that, the lid might be too small after cutting; therefore, the lid was replaced with a stainless-steel metal sheet. The stainless-steel water collector was supposed to be held by something from the bottom, but because the pot was too thin and cannot handle welds, held from the bottom by the 90° plastic elbow. A piece of the led will be cut off in order to turn its shape into a cone then weld it back together. Two 1.3-inch holes were drilled to install the pipe fittings. When the pipe fittings were tightened, the pot was bent to flat around it and two rubber pieces were added to prevent any leakage. The faucet, elbow and threaded pipes were supposed to be ordered online, but most of them were found in Acehardwere. A stainless metal sheet was cut and welded back together after taking a piece out of it to make a conic shaped lid for condensation. A pump was added because there weren’t enough parts to integrate the entire project.
The 12 DC pump was tested with various voltages to optimize its speed with how fast it takes Ali’s pipe to heat the water, however the time it takes the pipe to heat up the water is not constant, it changes according to the weather and how much sunlight it receives. The solution to that was adding a microcontroller to control the flow rate according to how much sunlight there is. Arduino which is a hobbyist-grade microcontroller with a prototyping daughter-board containing a 2kΩ resistor and a 2kΩ thermistor. A relay was soldered to the board to switch the voltage that runs the motor. The Resistor and thermistor are in a voltage-divider configuration, so that the voltage will change according to this equation.
T = -0.3519V6 + 5.6318V5 - 34.781V4 + 106.25V3 - 169.07V2 + 155.49V - 41.912. T is temperature and V is voltage. The equation was developed using an excel sheet that relates the resistance and temperature of the thermistor. The sheet was obtained from U.S Sensor corp. The code on the Arduino converts the ADC (Analog-to-digital) to a useful value. When the temperature is at or above 95 degrees C, the relay will turn on, powering the motor for a set amount of time; if the temperature is below 95 degrees C, the relay will be off. There is also a serial interface that prints the current voltage and temperature out on a serial monitor screen. The serial is included in the Arduino. The serial allows for temperature monitoring by connecting the microcontroller to a laptop.
