The innovative design of an outdoor centrifugal water filter

Jingchen Xie Dept. of Commercial Design & Dept. of Industrial Education and Technology

Chienkuo Technology University & National Changhua University of Education Changhua, Taiwan

e-mail: alenkimo@yahoo.com.tw

Abstract—A portable water filter, which is composed of an outer barrel, a transmission, and an inner barrel, is powered by centrifugal force. The transmission, comprising a shaft and a pedal, is housed at the bottom of the outer barrel. The shaft rotates when a force is applied to the pedal. The inner barrel is housed inside the outer barrel. The end of the shaft penetrates the bottom of the outer barrel and is fixed to the bottom of the inner barrel. The inner barrel contains a multi-layered filter pad. With this design, when unfiltered water is poured into the inner barrel, the pedal will rotate the inner barrel through the attached shaft when pedaling starts. Water, in turn, is filtered through the multi-layered filter pad, achieving the goal of water filtration.

Keywords- centrifugal force; water filter

I. PHILOSOPHY OF DESIGN The common design of a portable water filter simply

consists of a jug and a built-in filter. The filtration is done by gravity pulling water through the filter. Thus, the filtration process is very slow. To speed up the process, an external force can be applied which requires the installation of an electric motor. Such design will become useless in the outdoor environment where the electricity is not available.

The researchers had worked on research and product development for the outdoor usage of water filters. The researchers came up with a product that provides a solution to the problems mentioned above by the principle of centrifugal force.

II. BASES OF THEORIES Creativity is another name for the ability to create, and

can appears in all kinds of forms. The concept of creativity was first proposed by American psychologist Guilford in 1950. And in 1967, some study indicated that creativity is a behavior of divergent intellectual process. It includes: (1) Fluency: Having many ideas, (2) Flexibility: extrapolating thought in all directions, (3) Originality: Coming up with unusually, novel, and surprising ideas as the indicators for the evaluation of creativity with other involvement later, (4) Elaboration: Adding new concepts to the basic ones, and adding details and combine everything into a solid idea, and (5) Sensitivity: Finding shortcomings, needs, or unusual

parts of an idea. Secondly, creativity comes from a variety of sources and is full of personal styles, which can be summarized as: (1) Smart idiots: Between stubborn traditions and creative innovations, people often merge humanity, life needs, and artistry to create new developments. (2) Accidents: Accidents can result in a series of active research and development. (3) Demand: Driven by the demands of reality. (4) Advancement in technology: Using new technology for new creations and developments [1], [3].

According to Shen [4], creativity is influenced by (1) Intelligence, (2) Knowledge, (3) Thinking style, (4) Personality, (5) Motivation, and (6) Environment, among others. It is believed that creativity is a mental process that takes time, thorough imaginary inferences that make creativity more fluent, flexible, and original. The process contains these stages: (1) Preparation, (2) Incubation, (3) Illumination, and (4) Verification. The preparation stage is the process of collecting related information when issues occur.

The common design of a portable water filter is composed of a jug and a built-in filter. The filtration is done by gravity pulling water through the filter [2]. This approach has failed to meet the current needs since the result is disappointing and the process is slow. To improve the efficiency and water quality, an external force is usually applied in the industry in which water is forced to pass through many more filters.

Nevertheless, the industrial approach requires a motor powered by electricity. Thus, it is inconvenient to transport. In addition, it becomes completely useless in the outdoors when the electricity or other source of energy is not available. It is not feasible for the consumers to bring water with them for the purpose of good water quality when they travel or do outdoor activities. In response to the problems mentioned above, after series of careful assessments and improvements, the researchers’ years of experience in research and manufacturing has led to a practical and innovative product design.

III. CONTENT OF THE TOPIC A key feature of this product design that aims to solve the

problems mentioned above is the portable centrifugal water filter, which includes an outer barrel, a transmission and an inner barrel. The transmission sits in the assembling channel at the bottom of the outer barrel and is composed of a rotary shaft assembly and a pedal. The rotary shaft assembly

2010 International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks

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DOI 10.1109/CASoN.2010.111

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contains a shaft which rotates when a force is applied to the pedal. The inner barrel is housed inside the outer barrel. The end of the shaft penetrates the bottom of the outer barrel and is fixed to the bottom of the inner barrel for positioning. The inner barrel contains a multi-layered filter pad.

With the design mentioned above, when unfiltered water is poured into the inner barrel, the pedal will rotate the inner barrel through the attached shaft when pedaling starts. Water, then, is filtered through the multi-layered filter pad by the influence of the centrifugal force. Filtered water is stored in the space between the inner and outer barrels. Compared to the previous models of the portable water filters which either has a very low speed of water filtration or requires the installation of an electric motor to speed up the process, our product of the portable water filters accelerate the filtration process by utilizing the principle of centrifugal force. Therefore, no installation of a motor powered by electricity is required.

IV. METHODS AND TECHNIQUES The product is a portable centrifugal water filter,

including an outer barrel, a transmission and an inner barrel. The outer barrel has an opening on the top, an internal space, a hole at the bottom and a spout on the side. The bottom of the outer barrel is milled out to create a space for the assembling channel. The transmission sits in the assembling channel and is composed of a rotary shaft assembly and a pedal. The rotary shaft assembly contains a shaft which rotates when a force is applied to the pedal. The rotary shaft assembly also contains a one-way bearing which allows the shaft rotating only in one direction. A restorer is installed on the pedal. When the pedal is released, the restorer pushes the pedal back to its original place due to its self-restoration capability (Table 1) (Figure 1 and 2).

The inner barrel with an opening on the top sits in the internal space of the outer barrel. The end of the shaft of the transmission penetrates through the hole at the bottom of the outer barrel and is fixed to the bottom of the inner barrel for positioning. In addition, the inner barrel has a multi-layered filter pad. A lid is used to close the top opening of the outer barrel. A funnel, which penetrates through the lid, is inserted into the inner barrel through the top opening of the inner barrel (Figure 3 and 4). When using the product, the consumers first pour water into the inner barrel through the funnel. Then they start pedaling, which starts the shaft to rotate. This in turn rotates the inner barrel that is fixed to the end of the shaft. In this way, water can be filtered through the multi-layered filter pad by the influence of the centrifugal force. Filtered water is stored in the space between the inner and outer barrels. The drinkable water can be accessed from the spout (Figure 5). It has been submitted to the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office in February, 2010.

Table 1 The main components and the corresponding numbers

10 Outer barrel 11 Internal space 12 Hole 13 Spout 14 Assembling channel 20 Transmission 211 Shaft 22 Pedal 30 Inner barrel 31 Multi-layered filter pad 40 Lid 41 Funnel

Figure 1 3D view

Figure 2 Sectional view

Figure 3 Operation diagram 1

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Figure 4 Operation diagram 2

Figure 5 Sectional view of the multi-layered filter pad

V. ACHIEVEMENTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS The innovative design of this industrial product has the

following advantages: A. Easy to use

The innovative design makes the product easy to use and easy to transport. B. Time-saving and energy-saving

This innovative product is economical of time and energy. It meets the modern needs of energy efficiency and carbon dioxide emission reduction. C. Water filtration

This product filters water by the principle of centrifugal force. It suits the need of an individual consumer. D. The application of the innovative design of this product

This product is designed for the purpose of outdoor water filtration by the principle of centrifugal force. This innovative idea can be used as a reference for the application of product design in other related fields.

REFERENCES [1] G. Y. Jiang, “Creative Psychology: Exploring Usage of Creativity-

Grasp Elements that Affect Creativity,” Taipei: Wordpedia, 2007. [2] J. X. Lai, “A study on the absorption and filtration of the copper ion in

water by the filter sand with a tectorial membrane comprising ferric oxide.” Doctoral dissertation, Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University, 1994.

[3] S. H. Chang, “Creativity: Theory, Techniques, and Teaching,” Taipei: Wunan, 2007.

[4] T. L. Shen, “Principles and Design of Creativity,” Taipei: Wunan, 2005.

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