Aquaduct Bike Purifies Water As You Pedal

Mike writes "Winner of the '08 Innovate or Die competition sponsored by Google and Specialized, the Aquaduct is a pedal-powered concept vehicle that transports, filters, and stores water. The design has massive implications for communities where safe and secure sources of drinking water are not readily accessible."

I love the idea, but . . .

What about Beer?

Have they come up with something that will take my beer pee and filter it into water?

I live in Arizona and that would be a great thing to have in the desert.

--

Oh Well, Bad Karma and all . . .

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Dude, totally recycle-able beer, what an idea!

Somebody mod parent up please.

Re:I love the idea, but . . .

What about Beer?

Have they come up with something that will take my beer pee and filter it into water?

I live in Arizona and that would be a great thing to have in the desert.

Sure. From the inventor of the Segway: Pee filter runs on poo [treehugger.com].

Or better yet, get one of these [amazon.com]; hook one end up to a pee collection sac and stick the other end in your mouth and suck. Now you're halfway to a stillsuit.

No guarantee that it'll work with hangover-grade vomiting.

Re:I love the idea, but . . .

Umm, Bear Gryll's has assured me many times that it is OK to drink my pee, unfiltered.

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"come up with something that will take my beer pee and filter it"

Actually, if you forgo the filter and just bottle the pee, the result is virtually indistinguishable from American lager...

Interesting

So, as I sweat and pee, it could collect it, refine it and put it back in my sports bottle. I would imagine it might have a little twang to it if you catch my drift.

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You shouldn't really be losing sweat on your bike, except to evaporation. The "wind in your face" greatly increases the efficiency of sweating on a bike. Well, unless you're on very rugged terrain where you don't often get up to speed. As for pee, well, if you have to pee when riding a bike, you are clearly not pushing yourself hard enough.

Re:Interesting

Some of the areas of the world with the worst water quality are very high-humidity, where you may sweat even if you're riding at 20 mph.

And as far as "not pushing yourself hard enough," in most of the world, a bicycle is primarily transportation, not exercise.

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Also, in addition to the sibling AC's very correct post:

Wrong and wrong.

The amount of ...
<snip>
... reach peak performance.

You seem to have never watched something like the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia where riders have made an art of peeing while riding.

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What about atmospheric water generators? It seems like a much better way of getting water out of a high-humidity environment.

Ecoloblue [ecoloblue.com] is a very interesting product that I wish I had the money to buy*.

*I was not paid by Ecoloblue to make this post

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Great idea. We'll make evaporator farms. We can also use these remote places to allow young people the time to safely grow up into universe changing Jedi. Step 2) Womp Rats.

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The amount of additional cooling provided by the effective wind over the body is linear with speed

No, it's linear with drag, which according to what you say, goes up by the power of your speed.

Sounds like a good idea, but...

Does the filter remove bacteria from the water? I would think that the filter would become a haven for bacteria to breed propagate, especially when not in use. The main concern in countries where this would be useful are contaminants in the water and bacteria and I don't know of any filter that would effectively eliminate both without costing a fortune to replace every week.

This is more of a question than a criticism, seeing that I don't know if the filter technology exists or not...but a Brita filter isn

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That is a solved problem, the media of these filters is impregnated with iodine or another antimicrobial agent, or the tank contains an antimicrobial agent.

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Don't most field-use filters work by having pore sizes large enough for water to pass through but small enough to trap particulate matter and bacteria? I thought it was viruses -- due to their smaller size -- that most had trouble with, needing an additional supply of iodine, chlorine, or UV light to "purify" the water as opposed to merely "filtering" it.

See the US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine's list of Commercially Available Individual Water Purifiers [army.mil] (or WayBack link [archive.org]).

arakkis

just one step closer to a stilsuit!

Boil and condense

A boil and condense system might be another solution given that it could get away without he need to replace filters. And could also double as a stove.

Permanent magnets and metal coils are all that is needed to generate the heat. It could also have a stationary mode where the back wheels are off the ground so it could serve as a stove and avoid the need to collect/burn wood as well.

I grant that a boil and condense system would be a lot slower and require a heat sink. But then the entire water path could be

Limited Number of Possible Projects

This is a competition to design a green thing that is sponsored by google and specialized, specialized is a BIKE company. How many green products are there that incorporate a bike? Two using the bike to offset car usage and generating power with your pedal power. This is just a novel way to use that power while your still attached to the bike, there is really no reason for this to be actually on the bike at all.

massive^W minimal implications

It will have "massive implications"? Yeah right. This is likely to cost quite a bit, and it is going to be far cheaper to have other systems, from boiling the water, to stationary filters, to sterilizing and sealing a well. From what I have seen in Laos (a developing country), the urban population buys bottled water, and the rural population either does nothing, boils water, or the village pitches in to install a sealed well with a hand pump. The later costs on the order of $100-$150 start to finish. Or I suppose you could buy a bicycle to filter water.

However, I must note that the people developing this did not claim "massive implications". Here is a quote from the article:

In its present configuration it is not a feasible solution for most developing communities due to production costs and durability. But in fairness to the IDEO team, they have stated that, "In its current state, the Aquaduct is a prototype aimed squarely at demonstrating a concept and raising awareness around the issues of clean water in developing countries. The Aquaduct team plans to continue the concept's development into an economically and technologically viable solution that addresses challenges such as cost, suitable purification technologies, and the logistics of addressing an issue that [affects] billions."

Old news

See issue 14 of Make:

Re:Useless

What, like for small villages in the middle of nowhere without roads?

There are places in the world where people walk for miles so they can carry back heavy vessels of water, which may or may not be contaminated. The roads aren't likely to be much more than cart paths in many places. This aims at looking at that problem from end to end -- it carries the water, filters it for you, and is your round-trip conveyance.

This sounds like, while it's not a finished product, it's a hell of a good idea and a good start.

But in fairness to the IDEO team, they have stated that, âoeIn its current state, the Aquaduct is a prototype aimed squarely at demonstrating a concept and raising awareness around the issues of clean water in developing countries. The Aquaduct team plans to continue the conceptâ(TM)s development into an economically and technologically viable solution that addresses challenges such as cost, suitable purification technologies, and the logistics of addressing an issue that [affects] billions.â

When you have a better solution that doesn't have as many limitations, get back to us.

I say kudos to the company developing this, and good on 'em for trying to work on this problem.

Cheers

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I do applaud the effort. However, I know our church funded a mission to take water from a river, pipe it to the village and filter it. Not only did it do what this bike does, it saves about a half dozen villagers from being eaten by alligators. The villagers are happy about this. The alligators less so. The locals did the manual work so that they could handle basic repairs if needed.

I believe the village was called Pittsburgh...

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Or for earthquake-prone areas where the roads may be mostly intact, however the drinking water could be bad.
Of course, that would require having the bike beforehand.

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Nevermind, I get it now. This solves two problems, getting to the water, and purifying it.

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It seems nice and all, but the lifestraw [bbc.co.uk] is a much more elegant solution to the problem.

Which problem are you referring to? The problem of needing a drink from polluted water, or the problem of getting water to the residence? From what I read, the aquaduct bike handles not only filtration but transportation of a large amount of water (the water said a family of four needed 20 gallons a day, but they did not specify if that was the capacity of the bike's tank).On the other hand, we have a direct quote from the page you linked:

The LifeStraw isn't going to prevent the long journey, even if it