RU2751004C1 - Autonomous atmospheric moisture extractor - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: fresh water producing devices.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to the field of devices for producing fresh water from atmospheric air using renewable energy sources. Autonomous extractor of atmospheric moisture consists of a vertical-axial wind turbine in the form of an inlet vortex ejector, a collector with condensed moisture. The device additionally contains a vortex cooler, a condensation chamber, a radiator-heat exchanger for air cooling. The vertical-axial wind turbine is made in the form of an inlet vortex ejector designed to form a swirling laminarized air flow and pump it through an air duct into a vortex cooler, where the air flow is divided into hot and cold streams. The vortex cooler has one air duct for supplying the hot flow to the radiator-heat exchanger of the condensation chamber, and the other air duct also supplies cooled air to the radiator-heat exchanger of the condensation chamber. The moisture condensed in the radiator-heat exchanger enters the water collector, where the cold accumulator is installed, made of a composite material with low thermal conductivity. A condensation chamber with a vortex cooler, an air-cooling radiator and a water collector located in it is installed under the fill mound above the ground line. In the vortex inlet ejector, the vortex generator modules are located one above the other, and the inner radii of each module, starting from the upper one, are reduced by 10% and are set so that the air flow oncoming at a speed of 2 to 20 m/s passing through the air intake of each vortex module ejector, forms its swirling laminarized flow in the form of thin-walled air cylinders that do not mix with each other and are pumped through the air duct into the vortex cooler. In a vortex cooler, the flow is split, forming a hot air stream enriched with moisture and a cooled stream that enters the radiator-heat exchanger for cooling. Saturated hot air enters the condensation chamber, where it condenses on cooled radiators, and then the condensed moisture enters the water collector, where an additional cold accumulator is a block made of composite material with low thermal conductivity. The air dehumidified from moisture and cold air from the extraction chamber are discharged through the exhaust air ducts into the exhaust vortex ejector, and then into the environment. A water collector with a moisture condenser is installed under the embankment above the ground line. The exhaust vortex ejector is structurally similar to the inlet vortex ejector of atmospheric air.

EFFECT: invention increases efficiency of extraction of fresh water from atmospheric air.

1 cl, 1 dwg

Description

The invention relates to installations for producing fresh water from atmospheric air using renewable energy sources.

The problem of the shortage of fresh water is becoming more and more urgent for many regions of the world. Its aggravation is associated with population growth, climatic changes and a number of other reasons. So in the 20th century, the world's population has tripled. During the same period, the consumption of fresh water increased seven times, including for communal drinking needs - 13 times.

With such an increase in consumption, water resources have become severely scarce in a number of regions of the world. According to the World Health Organization, more than two billion people in the world today suffer from a lack of drinking water. In the next 20 years, taking into account the current trends in population growth and the world economy, one should expect an increase in the demand for fresh water by at least 100 km ³ per year. However, for many places on the globe, this problem is not new, since it is caused by climatic features, namely, a small amount of precipitation. Arid areas include those areas where there is less than 400 mm of precipitation per year. With such values, it is impossible to conduct agriculture without additional sources of water. The driest areas, with less than 100 mm of precipitation per year, account for 34% of the earth's surface (excluding Antarctica). Arid regions (100-200 mm of precipitation per year) account for 15% of the land surface. The same amount is occupied by semi-arid regions (200-400 mm of precipitation per year). Territories of arid lands are mainly found in developing countries, in which water consumption rates differ from industrialized countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in developing countries, only 25% of the rural population has reasonable access to a water source. The territories of 36 states of the world include arid regions, and the territories of 11 countries are 100% arid regions (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Djibouti, etc.). In Russia, the regions experiencing a shortage of fresh water include the Crimea and Kalmykia, from neighboring countries - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. Currently, water hunger is felt even in places where it did not exist before. Drought reigns on 70% of all cultivated land. At the same time, in the untouched steppes, the moisture content in the soil is 1.5-3 times higher than in arable land. The reason for water starvation is not a lack of fresh water, but a violation of the chain that connects water to soil. And more and more tangible changes in the regime of land waters are influenced by human activity, as a result of which the consumption of water for evaporation noticeably increases during the development of irrigation and an increase in the area of reservoirs. A decrease in atmospheric precipitation and river runoff with an increase in the evaporation rate of inland areas of the land also led to a decrease in their overall moisture content. Also, human activity is associated with a change in the exchange of groundwater, their replenishment due to the creation of artificial reservoirs and reduction as a result of intensive pumping. Up to 20 thousand km ^{3 of} groundwater is extracted annually. At present, under the influence of anthropogenic activity, more than 20% of the continental territory has been radically transformed (overgrazing, deforestation, etc.), which has led to a change in the water regime. Such environmental disturbances could not but affect the global process of water consumption.

A method of obtaining water from air by condensation on a cold surface has been known since ancient times. Even in the Middle Ages, the city of Feodosia was supplied with water, which was collected in structures filled with rubble, on the surface of which water condensed in the dry summer months, which was supplied through a system of pottery pipes with a diameter of 5-7 cm to the drinking fountains of the city (Evseev A.A. - O water supply of the city of Feodosia in the late 18th and early 20th centuries.http: //www.liveinternet.ru/users/kancstc/post365986337/). It is known that one of the main advantages of the Great Silk Road was the wells, installed at a distance of 12-15 km from each other, where water was extracted directly from the atmospheric air. In the construction of the well, ancient engineers used the vortex effect. The well itself was half of its height dug into the ground. In the center of the depression for the accumulated water, a pile of stones (condenser) neatly laid out in a high cone rose (Khamzya Umyarov - The Great Silk Road: Whirlwinds in the wells // Technology of youth, No. 8, 2008, pp. 20-23). The disadvantage of the known methods is the low efficiency and bulkiness of the structures.

Known installations for obtaining water from atmospheric air, using renewable energy sources, in particular solar energy (patents: RU No. 2261958 C1, publ. 20.12.2003; RU 2131000 C1, publ. 27.05.1999; RU 2149957, publ. 27.05.2000) ...

The disadvantages of the known installations are that for the extraction of fresh water from the environment, high energy consumption is required for the operation of the cooling element, which leads to low productivity, especially in winter.

Known installations for obtaining water from atmospheric air, using wind energy (Patent RU No. 2526628, publ. 27.08.2014; http://eco-energiya.blogspot.ru/2015/06/eolewater.html, http://derevnvaonline.ru / community / 46/3532). Disadvantages of these installations: for starting and operating a wind turbine, the minimum wind speed is 7 m / s and higher, the installations require periodic maintenance and repair (at least once a month), high material consumption and low productivity of moisture extraction from the air.

It is known that a cubic meter of air contains (depending on humidity) from 4 to 25 grams of water vapor (Schmeter S.M. Air humidity // Physical encyclopedia / Chief editor AM Prokhorov. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia, 1988. - T. 1. - S. 285-286. - 704 p.). This volume from 12 to 16 thousand km ^{3 of} moisture (or 0.000012% of all water on Earth) can be compared with the amount of water in the Great Lakes of North America. The developed installations for the extraction of fresh water from atmospheric air can collect on average about 20-30% of this amount. The best conditions for them (high humidity and temperature) are in countries located within 30 degrees of latitude from the equator. The poorest and most densely populated countries in the world are located here, with less than 5 thousand cubic meters per capita. m of water.

Known installations for obtaining water from atmospheric air using wind power (RF patent No. 2526628, IPC EO3V 3/28, publ. 27.08.2014; http://eco-energiva.blogspot.ru/2015/06/eolewater.html, http : //derevnyaonline.ru/communitv/46/3532). The disadvantages of these installations are that for the launch and operation of a wind turbine, the minimum wind speed is 7 m / s and higher, they require periodic maintenance and repair (at least once a month), high material consumption and low productivity of moisture extraction from the air.

Known vortex wind turbine with a vertical axis of rotation, containing an exhaust tower with an annular air intake at the base, a guide vane, a wind wheel installed at the outlet of the guide vane, an exhaust device and vortex generators, creating a swirling air flow (RF patent No. 2073111, IPC F03D 3/00 , publ. 10.02.1998). The disadvantage of this installation is that at a high speed of the swirling flow in the exhaust cylindrical channels, the wind wheel creates an air cushion that slows down the flow, and thereby reducing the efficiency of the installation, as well as the low efficiency of the wind turbine due to the low service life of the support nodes, due to the high dynamic loads on them from the side of the rotor, a complicated technology for the production of swirling blades, which affects an increase in their cost, and a relatively high material consumption. The wind energy utilization factor (KIEV) of this wind turbine is not more than 40%, therefore the plant performance is very low.

The closest in technical essence to the proposed invention is an installation for the extraction of fresh water from atmospheric air (RF patent No. 2649890, IPC E03B 3/28, publ. 05.04.2018, bull. 10). The installation contains a vortex wind turbine that drives air into the moisture extraction chamber, a radiator for air cooling, a water collector and a fill mound, and exhaust air ducts. Disadvantages of the known design:

- is the low efficiency of a vortex wind turbine, which contains input and exhaust vortex generators, while the input vortex generators consist of n + 1 identical modularly arranged devices for generating an air flow incident at a speed of 2 to 20 m / s, and each vortex generator is made in in the form of at least two hollow modules coaxially installed in the device, placed one in the other lower and upper in the form of truncated cone-shaped hyperboloids of revolution, and the inner radii of each hollow element are related as r _lower = 0.4375⋅r _upper , where r _lower is the radius of the lower element, r _top is the radius of the upper element, and the outer radii of the elements forming the air intake are as _follows : R BЗ = 5⋅r _bepx , where R _B3 is the outer radius of the hollow element, r _top is the radius of the upper element, vertical baffle blades curved in an Archimedes spiral to form a laminarized swirling flow into a spiral vortex-forming channels, having a spiral shape and tapering as it approaches a common cylindrical channel to form a single swirling flow in this common cylindrical channel. It is precisely the fact that all modules of the vortex generator structure have the same dimensions and their swirling flows are dumped into a common cylindrical channel and leads to ambiguity in the operation of the vortex generator when the air flow speed changes - at low wind speeds, the wind turbine will operate when the air speed increases. the flow in the cylindrical channel will block the growing boundary layer;

- a low-power exhaust air exhaust system, which affects the change in the ratio of temperatures required for the formation of a dew point in the moisture extraction chamber;

- poor thermal insulation of the moisture extraction chamber, especially when the installation is located in desert and treeless areas (steppes, deserts ...).

The objective of the present invention is to create an autonomous installation for efficient extraction of fresh water from atmospheric air (incoming at any air velocity) using a vortex wind turbine, simple in design and using the Vortex effect, which significantly affects the increase in the volume of air per unit time passing through the installation , as well as a temperature separator of the air flow (vortex thermal converter), for using the unit in areas with a lack of natural sources of fresh drinking water. As a result of using the proposed invention, it becomes possible to efficiently extract fresh water by generating and forming incoming air into a swirling stream by a vortex generator, followed by its injection into a vortex thermal converter (vortex cooler), where the flow is divided, forming a hot swirling stream enriched with moisture at the periphery, and the cooled stream, which enters the radiators for cooling, and the saturated hot air condenses on the cooled radiators and enters the water collector, where an additional cold accumulator is a block made of a composite material with low thermal conductivity.

The reliability and durability of the installation is increased due to the absence of rotating parts and assemblies, the operability and performance characteristics are preserved for a long time. The efficiency of the installation and the intensity of extraction depend only on the speed of the wind flow. The design of plants of various sizes will allow them to be used both individually and to supply water to entire settlements, as well as to create artificial reservoirs in arid regions to improve lands prone to desertification and degradation.

The above technical result is achieved by the fact that an autonomous extractor of atmospheric moisture, consisting of a vertical-axial wind turbine in the form of a vortex ejector, a collector with condensed moisture, according to the invention contains a vortex cooler, a condensation chamber, a radiator-heat exchanger for air cooling, while the vertical-axial the wind turbine is made in the form of a vortex ejector, installed with the possibility of forming a swirling laminarized air flow and pumping it through the air duct into the vortex cooler, where the air flow is divided into hot and cold streams, while the vortex cooler has one air duct for supplying the hot flow to the radiator - the heat exchanger of the condensation chamber, and the other air duct supplies cooled air to the radiator-heat exchanger of the condensation chamber, and the condensation chamber is equipped with an exhaust air duct for removing the dried air into the environment, while condensers This moisture enters the water collector, where a cold accumulator is installed, made of a composite material with low thermal conductivity, and the condensation chamber with a vortex thermostat, a radiator-heat exchanger and a water collector located in it is installed under the fill mound above the ground line. In the proposed installation for the extraction of fresh water from atmospheric air to obtain fresh water from atmospheric air, containing a vortex ejector and a water collector with condensed moisture, in the vortex inlet ejector, the vortex generator modules are located one above the other, and the internal radii of each module, starting from the upper one, decrease by 10% and installed so that the air flow oncoming at a speed of 2 to 20 m / s passing through the air intake of the vortex ejector is formed into swirling laminarized flows and is pumped through the air duct into the vortex cooler, where the flow is divided, forming a hot air flow, enriched with moisture, and cooled air flow that enters the radiator-heat exchanger, and saturated hot air enters the radiator-heat exchanger of the condensation chamber, where it condenses on cooled radiators, and the condensed moisture enters the water collector, where the block is an additional cold accumulator, made of a composite material with low thermal conductivity, while the air dried from moisture and cold air from the extraction chamber are discharged through the exhaust ducts into the exhaust vortex ejector, and then into the environment, and the collector with the moisture condenser is installed under the bulk mound above the ground line. The exhaust ejector is structurally similar to the inlet ejector of atmospheric air, its task is to intensively suck dry air out of the extraction chamber. The operation of a vortex cooler is based on the effect of temperature separation of gases (air) and is the result of a complex gas-dynamic process occurring in a spatial turbulent flow of a viscous compressible gas in accordance with the "vortex effect" discovered by J. Rank and applied in industry by A.P. Merkulov (Merkulov A.P. Vortex effect and its application in technology. M .: Mashinostroenie, 1969).

The essence of the proposed installation for the extraction of fresh water from atmospheric air is illustrated by a drawing, which shows the general scheme of the installation.

The installation for the extraction of fresh water from atmospheric air contains a vortex ejector of atmospheric air 1, a vortex cooling system 4, a chamber for extracting moisture from atmospheric air (condensation chamber) 3, an air duct for supplying a swirling air flow 2, connecting the vortex ejector 1 with a vortex cooling system 4, air duct 6, discharging hot moisture-enriched flow from the vortex cooling system 4, air duct 5, discharging cooled air flow from the vortex cooling system 4, radiator-heat exchanger for air cooling 7, exhaust pipe 9, exhaust ejector 10, exhausting air from the chamber for moisture extraction from atmospheric air 3, water collector 11, pipeline for removing extracted water from atmospheric air to the consumer 13, bulk hill 8, cold accumulator made of composite material 12. Water collector 11 is located under the bulk hill 8 above the ground line with a height equal to the depth of soil warming in depending on climatic local conditions. The vortex wind turbine (vortex ejector) 1 is installed with the possibility of forming a swirling laminarized flow and pumping it through the air duct 2 into the vortex chamber for extracting moisture from the atmospheric air 3.

Autonomous extractor of atmospheric moisture works as follows. The oncoming wind flow, starting at a speed of 2-3 m / s, passes through a vortex wind turbine (vortex ejector) 1, where it is converted into a swirling flow, which is pumped through an air duct 2 into a vortex cooling system 4, where the air flow is divided into hot and cold ... The hot swirling stream formed in the vortex cooler 4, enriched with moisture, enters the radiator-heat exchanger 7 through the exhaust air duct 6, and in the opposite direction comes the cooled flow entering through the pipes of the air duct 5 also into the radiator-heat exchanger 7 for cooling. The hot air saturated with moisture entering the condensation chamber 3 is condensed on the cooled radiator-heat exchanger 7, after which the extracted water enters the collector 11, where it is additionally cooled by the cold accumulator 12 made of a composite material with low thermal conductivity.

Further, the air dehumidified from moisture from the chamber for extracting moisture from atmospheric air 3 and cold air from the radiator-heat exchanger 7 are discharged through the exhaust air duct 9 and using the exhaust ejector 10 into the environment. An extraction chamber 3 with a vortex cooling system 4 located in it, a radiator-heat exchanger 7 and a water collector 11 are installed under the embankment 8 above the ground line. The accumulated extracted fresh water from the atmospheric air flows by gravity through the pipeline 13 to the consumer.

Claims (1)

An autonomous extractor of atmospheric moisture, consisting of a vertical-axial wind turbine in the form of an inlet vortex ejector, a collector with condensed moisture, characterized in that it contains a vortex cooler, a condensation chamber, a radiator-heat exchanger for air cooling, while the vertical-axial wind turbine is made in in the form of an inlet vortex ejector designed to form a swirling laminarized air flow and pump it through the air duct into a vortex cooler, where the air flow is divided into hot and cold streams, while the vortex cooler has one air duct for supplying the hot flow to the radiator-heat exchanger of the condensation chamber, and the other air duct supplies cooled air also to the radiator-heat exchanger of the condensation chamber, moisture condensed in the radiator-heat exchanger enters the water collector, where the cold accumulator is installed, made of a composite material with low thermal conductivity e, the condensation chamber with a vortex cooler, an air cooling radiator and a water collector located in it, is installed under the embankment above the ground line, in the vortex inlet ejector, the vortex generator modules are located one above the other, and the internal radii of each module, starting from the upper one, decrease by 10 % and are installed so that the oncoming air flow at a speed of 2 to 20 m / s passing through the air intake of each vortex ejector module forms its own swirling laminarized flow in the form of thin-walled air cylinders that do not mix with each other and are pumped through the air duct in a vortex refrigerator, where the stream is split, forming a hot air stream enriched with moisture, and a cooled stream that enters the radiator-heat exchanger for cooling, and saturated hot air enters the condensation chamber, where it condenses on cooled radiators, and then the condensed moisture enters in the water a collector, where an additional cold accumulator is a block made of a composite material with low thermal conductivity, while the air dried from moisture and cold air from the extraction chamber are discharged through the exhaust air ducts into the exhaust vortex ejector, and then into the environment, and a water collector with a moisture condenser is installed under the embankment above the ground line, at the same time, the exhaust vortex ejector is structurally similar to the inlet vortex ejector of atmospheric air, its task is to intensively pump out dried air from the extraction chamber.

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