STEM-In-Action Fall Follow Up: Water Warriors

It's already the last edition of our STEM-In-Action Grant Fall Follow Ups, where we check in with our 22-23 STEM-In-Action Grant winners to see what they've accomplished since NJ&EE! The U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) awards five STEM-In-Action Grants of up to $5,000 to eCYBERMISSION teams wishing to further develop and implement their projects in their communities. We hope you've had as much fun catching up with these awesome teams as we have. Be sure to stay tuned in 2024 for our Spring Scoops, where we'll check in with STEM-In-Action teams once again. For our final Follow Up, we're featuring 2023 National Finalists, team Water Warriors.

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We are the Water Warriors, a team of ninth graders from Scottsdale, Arizona in our 2nd year of participating in eCYBERMISSION together.  We come from different high schools (Chaparral, Desert Mountain, and Paradise Valley), but we are good friends who enjoy solving problems in our community. This year, we decided to tackle the megadrought that’s been plaguing our home state for nearly 30 years, causing many communities to have reduced access, and in some cases, no access to water.

Our solution was to design a Star Wars-inspired moisture harvester that can collect water from the air year-round and help members of our community and communities around the world, in places such as Africa and the Middle East, have better access to clean water.

We began by researching ways to collect moisture and discovered the most efficient water-absorbing material for low humidities, MOF-801.  Our design uses this material along with a condensing system to allow multiple absorption/desorption cycles per day.

Members of the Water Warriors meet with engineer Charles Skidmore to learn more about the effect of temperature and humidity on dew point

We tested our design with a combination of modeling and prototyping.  Since we were unable to obtain this material due to the constraints of this project, we ran a computer model which showed the material would work well in our desert environment.  We also ran a number of tests on a physical prototype of the condensing system.

This revealed several necessary enhancements, and we used what we learned from the results to build and test a revised design.  Using these results, we were able to create a design for a future, even more, efficient water harvester.  Widespread deployment of our creation in the future could save lives and make our community, and the world, a better, healthier place for everyone.

Members of the Water Warriors plan their fan speed experiment and review flow charts.

We were excited to be awarded a STEM-In-Action grant to continue our work towards a completely functional prototype.  We are using the funds to buy equipment and materials to improve our design.  We are focusing on five areas:

• Community Outreach - Visit our website at AZWaterWarriors.org to learn more about our research and project.
• Fan System - At the end of our final construction we saw that our fan systems were moving too fast and that we needed to slow them down. We are using a small portion of the grant money for resistors and getting the fan to run at the right speed.  You can see what we are doing in the pictures.
• Condensing System - We determined that we need to both decrease thermal communication with the outside environment via better insulation and add a much stronger Peltier plate.
• Material Testing - Finding a cheaper and more accessible supply of MOF-801 than is available in our current situation would help cut costs and improve availability.  We will attempt to get hold of a sample to validate our modeling.
• Measurement and Control - We are working on designing and programming a way to control the process and take measurements.You can see one of our flow charts below.

Flowchart for the proposed control system

Until next time,

Ira

Chas

Adi

Eric

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What a great way to end this year's STEM-In-Action Grant Fall Follow Ups! The level of maturity and finesse that team Water Warriors are bringing to their experimentation is nothing short of amazing. We are excited to check back in with them this spring to see what progress they've made!

eCYBERMISSION registration for the 2023-2024 competition is open at www.ecybermission.com/register, and Mini-Grant applications are are open until November 16 at www.ecybermission.com/minigrantprogram. For questions about eCYBERMISSION or help with registration, email missioncontrol@ecybermission.com.

Faith Benner

Sr. Communications and Marketing Specialist