 |
 |
| |
 |
| A turbine intake drives air underground through a network of piping that rapidly cools the air to the temperature of the soil, where it reaches 100% humidity and condenses. The water is stored in an underground tank and pumped to the crop roots via subsurface drip irrigation.
|
Swinburne uni student wins award for irrigation design
Ed Linacre, an industrial design graduate of Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, has won the 2011 James Dyson Award for his Airdrop irrigation system.
In developing the promising new irrigation-by-condensation technique, Linacre has captured the attention of some of the world’s top designers and commercial developers in the USA, Asia and the Middle East.
Linacre’s Airdrop system was developed during his honours year after an arduous internship in a top German design firm.
High levels of farmer suicide in the Murray–Darling Basin drove Linacre to turn to ancient cooling techniques to create a new subsurface irrigation system for drought-ravaged landscapes worldwide.
A newspaper article highlighting weekly farmer suicides was the inspiration for the project. But a conversation with a struggling Mildura orange farmer zeroed Linacre in on the blight of precious water escaping into the atmosphere from drying soils.
Although water vapour is so abundant in the atmosphere that it is the major greenhouse gas, responsible for trapping the heat necessary for life on Earth, it evaporates from the soil where it is needed to grow crops.
After experiments trying to capture water with big canopies over plants, he looked to traditional techniques by which tribespeople cool their huts with small underground tunnels. “They were using the soil underground to cool the air, but water was also produced as well and they had to create catchments so I thought, ‘there it was’.”
Initial experiments with highly conductive copper piping to condense water vapour from the air weren’t successful until copper wool was inserted to maximise the condensation area.
A small wind-turbine collects the condensed water in an underground tank, and solar energy is used to pump the water directly to plant roots. The prototype system can already deliver up to a litre of water per day depending upon prevailing atmospheric humidity.
As the winner of the James Dyson Award, Linacre will receive £10,000. A further £10,000 will be awarded to Swinburne’s Faculty of Design.
Source: Press release, Swinburne University of Technology |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
