VietNamNet Bridge - The water distillation equipment uses solar energy, has low production costs and has many outstanding features.

It took Hoang Van Viet, a young lecturer of the Ly Tu Trong Polytechnic College, three months long to make the water distillation

It took Hoang Van Viet, a young lecturer of the Ly Tu Trong Polytechnic College, three months long to make the water distillation, which is simple but effective. 

Viet said with the water instillation system, he can ‘pay off the debt’ to poor people. The ‘debt’ was the promise of creating a system allowing the poor to collect water for their daily use.

Viet began thinking of such a system when he visited mangrove areas in the provinces of Dong Thap and Can Tho to install Australian-made water filtration systems. He saw the local people who were thirsty for fresh water, but could not afford water filtration equipment. And he decided to create a made-in-Vietnam filtration system cheap and simple enough for everyone to use. 

Viet’s first version cost him millions of dong but it failed. However, with the support of the colleagues, he decided to start from the very beginning. He got up at 7 am every morning, ran the system and checked the indexes of water, wind power, temperature and radiation conditions.

The water distillation equipment uses solar energy, has low production costs and has many outstanding features.

Luckily, the next version of the system, the one which uses solar energy, was built.

Viet’s water distillation system comprises many vacuum glass manifolds which have the function of receiving solar radiation and heating the fresh water inside them. 

The fresh water gets heated and transfers the heat to the volume of water that needs distillation (brackish, alum infected water or seawater) through a heat transferring plate. The plate is covered by a black heat-resistant painting.

As such, the volume of water that needs distillation can receive heat from two sources. When the water evaporates, the high temperature steam will meet the glass cover which has low temperature (the glass cover has thermal convection with the air outside), and will condense into pure water. 

Experiments show that the system can bring high output of distilled water: with the intensity of solar radiation at 530 W/m2, the system can create 11 liters of water per square meter. The other distillation products can create 3-4 liters of water only.

Since Viet uses vacuum glass tubes to heat water, he can get hot water at high temperature, while the water gets hot very quickly. The distilled water can be used for drinking and cooking.

Scientists, highly appreciating Viet’s work, noted that a great advantage of the equipment is that it is cheap and easily installed.

Kham Pha