May has arrived
May has come at last and the deadline to complete our project looms ever closer. One of the major priorities this month was to work on compiling our information in order to complete the summary report. As a means of maximizing efficiency, we decided to split the report into several parts so that each team member could focus on writing a particular subject. Afterward, we switched our respective sections and made any corrections and improvements as necessary. This enabled us to merge all the individual pieces together, giving us more time to make any final corrections as they were needed for the final submission.
Our team is also anxiously awaiting the arrival of our prototyping software so that we can create our display model. Now that the burden of the summary report has been lifted, we can again focus on EurekaFest ‘09.
Also during this month we received the stamped metal pieces for our array from a local manufacturer who was able to help us in this process. The parabolic trough is now ready to be constructed so we can continue running tests on the condensing side of the project.
This comes, however, after we achieved a major breakthrough with our project. Although the test was not entirely accurate to the form we hope to market when we finally complete the project, we were able to yield water from the humid air leaving the dehydrator. Since all of our pieces are not yet completed we decided to surround the exhaust tube from the dehydrator with a bag of ice to cool the air inside the tube. The tube was positioned into a plastic container and any holes/crevices were filled to prevent air leaks and the entrance of water from the melting ice which would ruin the test. This worked and we were ecstatic that our idea had finally come to fruition, giving the necessary boost of enthusiasm to continue working on the project.
Good luck to the rest of the teams and we can’t wait to see you and your projects at EurekaFest…less than a month away!