Satellite Award 2010 for Satellite Award 2010

Piezo Shower made the 2nd Price Satellite Award 2010. For this project MEDes students from four different countries and design schools: Natalie Weinman, Victor Stelmasuk, Sebastian Jansson and Fernanda Pizá worked together in Paris to explore the future of water and came up with a concept of a self-heating shower system the project was supervised by Thomas Lommee and Sebastian Müller . The prototyping took place at ENSCI Les Ateliers Paris. Visit Piezo Shower blog to get more information on the project process .

Control Panel

The system is controlled with this waterproof touch-screen display, powered as well by the running water.
With a simple interface, you can control the temperature and the water pressure. It awakens our consumption consiousness with useful information as elapsed shower time and amount of used water.

Pre-Painting

Covering the fills with pre-paint spray.

the fluid joints

Prototyping

filling the weldingjoints



the object in total


during the process



the welding


taping the joints before welding





beginning with the scale-1-model by using the half-size-model as a help



bending at the machine





bending by hand


the foot of the object

Sketches

 

Researchers Develop Electricity-Generating Clothing

Here is an example of electricity generating clothing that we suggest to be applied in the shower in order to generate warm-water

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330615,00.html

17.02.2010 Meeting Natalie, Fernanda, Sebastian

Here are the concept notes from today. The one we found most interesting is the SELF HEATING SHOWER SYSTEM "Generating Energy Through Water Movement".

+ Transforming water pressure of the existing plumbing installation (or at least the existing shower water cycle); with the following possibilities:
- Material that uses friction with water.
- Turbine + transformer = energy
- Split water path to increase pressure (like with the rivers)
- Body movement in the shower
- Chemical reaction
- Tap energy loss recovery
- Geothermal heating principle
- Silicone microtubes?

Anyway, here are the pictures from the rest of the drafts:

   

  

 

Flow friction and heat transfer of ethanol–water solutions through silicon microchannels

interesting article on flow friction and heat transfer:


Huiying Wu¹, Xinyu Wu and Zhen Wei
School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, People's Republic of China
¹ Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: whysrj@sjtu.edu.cn

Abstract. An experimental investigation was performed on the flow friction and convective heat transfer characteristics of the ethanol–water solutions flowing through five sets of trapezoidal silicon microchannels having hydraulic diameters ranging from 141.7 µm to 268.6 µm. Four kinds of ethanol–water solutions with the ethanol volume concentrations ranging from 0 to 0.8 were tested under different flow and heating conditions. It was found that the cross-sectional geometric parameters had great effect on the flow friction and heat transfer, and the microchannels with a larger W_b/W_t (bottom width-to-top width ratio) and a smaller H/W_t (depth-to-top width ratio) usually had a larger friction constant and a higher Nusselt number. Entrance effects were significant for the flow friction and heat transfer in silicon microchannels, and decreased with the increase of dimensionless hydrodynamic length L and dimensionless thermal length L⁺_h. When L > 1.0, the hydrodynamic entrance effect on the flow friction was ignorable. For the developed laminar flow in silicon microchannels, the Navier–Stokes equation was applicable. It was also found that the volume concentrations had different effects on the flow friction and heat transfer. Within the experimental range, the effect of volume concentrations on the flow friction was ignorable, and the friction constants of the ethanol–water solutions having different concentrations were the same as those of the pure water. However, volume concentrations had great effect on the convection heat transfer in silicon microchannels. With the increase of the volume concentrations, the Nusselt number of the ethanol–water solutions increased obviously, which was attributed to the combination effect of the increase in the Prantdtl number as well as the volatilization effect of the ethanol. Based on the experimental data, the dimensionless correlations for the flow friction and heat transfer of the ethanol–water solutions in the silicon microchannels in a function of the cross-sectional geometrical parameters, entrance effect and volume concentrations were proposed for the first time.

Print publication: Issue 4 (April 2009)
Received 28 October 2008, in final form 18 December 2008
Published 11 March 2009

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0960-1317/19/4/045005

15.02.2010 Meeting Natalie and Fernanda

With the intention of better definning this product-to-be we just pointed out this few notes:

DEFINITIVE POINTS
- Used in the shower.
- Connected to pipelines.
- Alternative electricity: Power Turbine
- Creates awareness
- Brings a real profit to the user (investment not just luxury gadget)

MAYBES?
- In/visible
- Docking station
- Modularity
- Heating system for the water (hybrid with the usual gas)

We think it's important that the energy created with the turbine by the natural shower water cycle is used in a smart way, so could it be that we use the existing installation to heat the water that we use?

Here's different versions of an analog that works with electricity, directly on the shower head to heat the water. We could then substitute the electricity...

http://www.green-energy-efficient-homes.com/electric-shower-head.html

Energie producing turbine

This turbine can be stuck onto a water-tap and as soon as the water runs it produces enough energie to charge your mobile phone for example. (220v)

http://www.mobicroco.de/news/islate-review-wasserkraft-daheim-404-error/7785.html

Sony Technology

Here's the technology that Sony uses in their eBook Reader. It's basically a polarized pigment that reacts to the screen by going up or down. That's what gives it a high resolution and paper-like sensation.

Meeting 12.02.

Meeting 12.02.2010


Statement:

USE the cycle water as it is, not change it necessarily!

Sketches/Ideas:

Using the already existing water-pressure in the pipe to produce the energy needed to run a shower-radio/temperature/meter/consumption/countdown/Chronometer etc. via a small turbine.
Why? More fun whilst listening to the radio under the shower and being aware of how much water you use/ how long you shower.

How does it work:

Left side of the following picture: the tiles in a shower.
Right side of the following picture: what happens

1. When the shower is switched off - it lookes like ususal tiles.
2. As soon as the shower gets turned on, the Radio gehts on with it (the turbin rotates because of the water passing in the tube and energy gets produced)
3. The screen appears on the right side of the tile, while a digital symbol of a turbine rotating on the left symbolizes the movement of the turbine/the water in the pipe
   
4. the tiles next to the "radio-tile" on each side (to the right and the left) are a "speaker-tiles" for the radio (the surface-structure of these tiles could go on as a pattern over the whole wall
5. when the water gets turned off- the radio stops as well! (or could run a little while longer with an integrated short-term-battery that recharges itself during the next shower)
   

Which programms are interesting:

• The touch-screen enables an easy "ipod-like"-way of flipping through the programms.
• only digital numbers are shown on the screen (keep it simple)
  
• No buttons needed where water could run in (only one plain surface)
• Nothing visible when its switched of - its just a tile!

Drawing of the turbine in the tube and side cut of the tiles/speakers:

Already existing temperature indicator:

http://www.xoxide.com/thermaltake-flowtx-flowmeter-wi.html

Already existing shower-speakers
http://thegadgetcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/shower_speaker.jpg

12.02.2010 SAVING WATER MAT

http://www.furnicraft.info/water-conservating-reduce-your-use-non-slip-mat/