Design and construction of a pedal powered water heater

Abstract

This report was about the design and construction of pedal powered water heater that was targeted for people living in rural areas. The idea in this project was to rescue the rural community from consumption of dirty water and also consequences of cutting down trees, through boiling of water using equipment that is familiar to them like bicycle. The energy for this product comes from the human being through pedaling of a bicycle to create rotary motion to turn the alternator which afterwards was to produce electrical energy according to the laws of electromagnetism. This electrical energy was then converted to heat energy by heating element which was connected to the alternator output terminals. In this process therefore water heating was achieved. The specific objective of this project were; to determine the requirements for the pedal powered water, to select appropriate material for different components of the product and finally to construct and test the performance of the prototype. To achieve the above objectives, data had to be collected from the target customers and the target specification for the product were based on the highly emphasized customer needs in considerations of the personal ability in terms of energy since energy input was to be derived from the person. From the results, based on the power of 48W drawn from the alternator, it was able to raise temperature of a half-liter of water from 26oC to 41oC in five minutes. This increase in temperature was low because of low power supply which was also as a results of low power input by the person of 69W. Power input was to be increased by increasing the input torque. The selling price for the product is estimated at 384,000Ugshs this is relatively cheaper than the benchmark which costs 480,000Ugshs. This cost may still be high for the target market but because of time we were unable to look for the alternative ways of reducing the product costs. But proper recommendations have been provided at the end of this report.