Distilled Water Acquisition System

Access to safe drinking water around the world is becoming more and more difficult. This system can be attached to motorcycles and cars running around the world to efficiently produce distilled water from undrinkable water. It is a sustainable technology that will bring sustainable access to drinking water closer to people in urban areas of developed countries as well as developing and emerging countries with inadequate social infrastructure, and has the potential to become a part of their daily lives.

According to the Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), 71% of the world's population has access to clean water at the tap with water supply infrastructure in place, while 29% of people still lack easy access to water, 11% of whom do not have access to clean drinking water.

Cars and motorcycles are widely used all over the world, in some places they are cabs, in others they are ambulances. And many of these are internal combustion engines with gasoline engines, which generate a lot of heat.

If the energy from this heat, which is otherwise discarded, could be used efficiently in real life, it would have a huge impact on changing access to water around the world, especially for those who have difficulty accessing water.

The system is small and simple in structure, and consists of a raw water tank, an evaporator for vaporization and coagulation, and a distilled water tank. These are located in the muffler directly connected to the engine, and the heat from the muffler promotes evaporation from the raw water, and at the same time, the distilled water is produced by efficient cooling. Also, these water generating devices do not have any operating parts such as motors, nor do they require filters. The distilled water tank is also heated by the waste heat, which has the effect of sterilizing the water.

Prototypes mounted on a generator and a submersible pump have succeeded in obtaining about 1L of water per hour without interfering with their use.

We want to use this technology to help people who have difficulty accessing clean water, people in developing and emerging countries. People in these areas often use leftover water from pumping, wells, and rivers as drinking water, which can cause illness and poor health in many cases if left untreated. At the same time, there are many motorcycles in operation around the world for personal use, private businesses, and public transportation, and fuel-based internal combustion engines are widely used in automobiles, pumps for agriculture, and outboard motors for rivers and lakes. Humans have a constant need for drinking water, and the availability of clean and safe water will have a positive impact on the social infrastructure in all aspects. We are considering how to develop and install internal combustion engines in areas where access to water is difficult.

Our goal is to add a simple technology that produces clean water to the internal combustion engines that are prevalent in developing and emerging countries, as well as other sites around the world, to make it a sustainable and versatile technology, and we believe that harnessing the heat energy that is discarded into the atmosphere is a meaningful challenge for humanity.

We began by developing a system to obtain distilled water by modifying the water pump and generator to meet less stringent operating conditions, and in tests with the prototype, we succeeded in obtaining 1 liter of distilled water per hour without interfering with its performance. We are now planning to expand this technology to the more popular outboard motors, motorcycles and automobiles. By overcoming engineering and manufacturing challenges and taking on the challenge of widespread adoption, we aim to improve access to clean water around the world.

The breakthrough of this solution for obtaining distilled water is that it has a simple structure for the essential need of getting drinkable water, and it can be adapted to engines and internal combustion engines around the world. Generates distilled water using heat from the engine exhaust, so the engine can be used as usual because the muffler is only replaced with a distiller.
This prototype has been patented in Japan, where it was developed, as well as in several other countries, including the United States, China, Thailand and some countries, and has the following features

1. simple structure
　- The evaporation method and atmospheric release are used together to　remove components other than water.
　- No moving parts, just a housing structure.
2. no running cost
　- No running costs due to the use of ENG exhaust heat
3. easy to maintain
　- No consumable parts such as filters.
　- No bacteria growth due to constant use at nearly 100 degrees

Distillation method requires only drainage and cleaning for maintenance
- No need for replacement parts such as filters
- Can be disassembled and cleaned by removing the bolts
- Can be sterilized by air firing

This solution is a prototype, and we currently have zero units. We are currently working on designs for motorcycles and automobiles. It is a simple system that can be produced by press molding process and welding, and we aim to have 100 units in operation in a test deployment in a year, and to have 1 million units in widespread use in 5 years.

Prototype water production performance, number produced, number of tests conducted, number of field tests demonstrated, and number of market penetrations

Full-time staff: 1
Project Leader: Masahiko Yamanaka

Contractors: 4 approximately
Depends on project activities such as development and testing

We have strong relationships with major companies and university research institutes, and we are committed to open innovation. We have the manufacturing capability to materialize the seeds of ideas and technologies into appropriate showcase prototypes, and we are strong in lean prototyping by actually validating them in the field. I have experience as an IT and business development consultant at IBM and have been involved in various business development projects in emerging countries in Southeast Asia. We excel at addressing essential needs and working as a team in areas where social infrastructure is not widely available.

We have been working on projects with major companies and various organizations through open innovation, rather than completing them on our own. We have been working with major companies and organizations through open innovation. For example, the AI robot we are developing is made up of a team of specialists with diverse capabilities in mechatronics, electronics, communications, applications, and web services, each with their own strengths. We have been successful in our projects by respecting each other and playing to our strengths in achieving simple and essential goals. And in order to realize unprecedented concepts and creativity, it is important to share basic values, respect each other, and be flexible in our efforts to create impact.

We want to contribute to the realization of a better world by providing solutions to emerging issues with simple technology. We are also interested in technologies that have remained as ideas or elemental technologies and have never been implemented in society, but with the appropriate applications, social implementation can be achieved, and we believe that it is important to achieve maximum impact through open innovation through organizational collaboration. The SOLVE challenge is the environment we want to be in and the impact we want to create.

We need funds for technology development, which we invest in the development of designs and molds. We also need to design and formulate a business model, which we hope to spread through the power of industry, including industries related to automobiles and motorcycles, accessory parts and distributors.

Creating impact through challenge requires dissemination, and there are challenges that must be overcome. As engineering, there are various points such as cost reduction, weight reduction, standardization, versatility, and mass production improvement. We would also like to take on the challenge of developing a model that is sustainable and less economically burdensome for users in developing countries by working with various teams that need access to clean water.

This technology has a use case that fits the reality of the situation, and there are plans to improve it into a better solution with widespread awareness and adoption, as the need for this technology is essential for humans to have access to clean water.

This technology has a use case that fits the reality of the situation, and there are plans to improve it into a better solution with widespread awareness and adoption, as the need for this technology is essential for humans to have access to clean water. By collaborating with GM, which is at the heart of the automotive industry, we believe that this technology has the potential to have a dramatic and lasting impact on both society and GM.

This technology has a use case that fits the reality of the situation, and there are plans to improve it into a better solution with widespread awareness and adoption, as the need for this technology is essential for humans to have access to clean water. Securing drinkable water is often the responsibility of women and children in developing societies, and technology that frees them from this task will reduce the burden on their bodies and give them more time to engage in studies and other activities, which will be the basis for social development.