Discover in Drought: Windmill Powered Water Pumping Mechanism for Drought

Discovery in Drought is a wind powered electricity and water pumping mechanism for droughts. This design imitates the action of wind spinning a turbine and generating power to pump water from the ground into a home.

Global Warming: Droughts have increasingly become such a huge problem in this world because of the rate of global warming that humanity is advancing at. The amount of plastic, oil and natural resources that we are scraping from earth's surface is making the world get hotter at a much faster rate than it should be. The outcome of global warming can be wildfires, human, plant, and animal deterioration as well.

Huge Droughts: In the past people have experienced terrible droughts such as the Great Famine in India, Dust Bowl in the United States, the Millennium Drought in Australia, and the Horns of Africa. All of these droughts left the countries with huge food and water scarcity.

Now that I have provided some background information, I am going to get into my own 3D model that I made using Tinkercad. Going into this challenge, I knew that I was going to have to design something that can be easily accomplished in real life and on a larger scale as well.

Wind Turbine: To design my wind turbine, I decided to use a pyramid shaped base and height structure with diagonal barring along each side. The reason this adds so much stability to the elevation is because it works as an outline to provide more support to the main lengthy branches on the side. As the actual turbine, I used a four bladed propeller; this will allow it to have a lot of power while also increasing the number of rotations in the gearbox to generate electricity.

Well and Pipe: Behind the turbine there is a well with a pipe coming out of it. The power from the wind turbine causes water to pump from the pipe into the house. The outcome of this is that it provides basic necessities for families.

Overall System Explanation: When the wind blows, the Kinetic Energy from the wind rotates the blades at low RPM (Rotations Per Minute) and high torque. Since this is not enough power to turn the generator, the gearbox comes into place. The gearbox is used to increase speed over 100 times and transfer it to the high-speed shaft. The high-speed shaft is connected to the generator which produces electricity. This generated electricity powers the water pump which provides water for families.

Software: Tinkercad

Imitation Model:

-Plastic Turbine

-Popsicle Sticks (Thick and Thin)

-Clear Cup

-Water

-Blue Food Coloring

-Carboard

-LED

-Straw

-DC Motor with Wire

Real Life Supplies:

-Rotor Blades and Generator/Motor

-Metal Rods and Metal Base (Tower)

-Industrial Pipe and Water Pump

-Concrete House and Roof Shingles

-Gearbox

-Power Cables

-Transformer

Problem: Droughts can be life threatening in many ways such as lack of water for humans, animals and plants. The increase in heat strokes, wildfires, and industrial decrease can all be outcomes of a drought. This problem needs to be fixed.

Solution: I will create a natural system to pump water that does not need any oil, plastic or anything else that contributes to global warming. (The explanation of how I did this is written in my introduction)

Problem Inspiration: I found out about this problem when I watched a movie called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. This is a movie that is inspired off of a real boy named William Kamkwamba. He is a boy from Malawi. When he became thirteen his parents could no longer afford school and needed him to start working. The only problem is that he really loved learning so he snuck into his library to read science books. While this was happening he noticed how difficult it was for him to access water and electricity. After learning a lot from the books he took scrap parts that he found around his village and built a windmill to generate electricity and pump life-saving water. The moment I saw this I knew that I wanted to design a more modern and updated version by tweaking his design and making it my own.

After I designed my 3D model using Tinkercad. I thought that it would be a great idea to create a simplified model.

Step 1, Building the Windmill: This was the most tedious part because I had to hand cut about 20 individual pieces with popsicle sticks. After this I created a base at the top of the popsicle stick stand and glued the motor on top of that. Then I mounted the blade to the motor and my Windmill was ready.

Step 2, Making the House: For the house I used carboard to shape out the walls and the door. Then I used popsicle sticks to make the top of the house. I shaped out a window with wax paper and my house was ready.

Step 3, Creating the Well and Pipe: For the well I cut down a plastic cup and filled it with blue tinted water. For the pipe I took a jumbo straw and connected it from the well to the house which replicate the water pumping into the house.

I wanted to conclude by saying that millions of people die due to the heat every year and it is a really sad sight to see. But if more fortunate people use their resources to help and find solutions to these problems it could saves many lives and create huge breakthroughs. Finally, I thank Tinkercad and Autodesk for putting together a really cool challenge. I also wanted to thank the judges for using their precious time to judge the entries. Thank You for Reading

https://storywarren.com/the-boy-who-harnessed-the-wind/

https://www.neso.energy/energy-101/electricity-explained/how-electricity-generated/how-electricity-generated-using-wind

https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2023.1237073

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/energy/energy-economics/faqs-1/how-does-a-wind-turbine-generate-electricity