Beginning the Project

        Starting this long project began with the process of working on initial research.  I know what I wanted to do, but learning about it has proved to be long and tedious.  The first part this learning process was very basic.  The idea of fresh water as a resource is the problem that I was looking to tackle.  After being an appropriate tech major, and learning a lot about sustainability, it was general knowledge fresh water is becoming more of a scarce resource around the world.  I think it is very important to not lose sight of the foundations of Appropriate Technology.  This is hard to do in the department after taking classes dealing with photovoltaics and wind energy.  Which, generally, is geared to residential systems in which the consumers are normally somewhat wealthy.  

       The solar water distillers I was interested in researching are low-tech systems that are meant for people in poorer countries that are in need of fresh water.  The technology works on the basis of evaporation and condensation of water using the sun as the energy source needed. The next big part of my research was deciding what aspect of this technology I wanted to study and try to improve on.  After talking with Dr. Raichle he suggested some ideas of ways to possibly improve the technology.  After some basic research on the distillers it looked like what I really needed to research was a problem of effectiveness of the systems.  Generally, these solar water distillers do not make enough clean water in order for them to be widely considered.  This realization, along with Dr. Raichle's ideas led to looking at what the optimum amount of water was to have in the systems.  If there is too much, or too little water in the systems they are not effective.