A new maritime lifesaving distiller driven by wind Original Research Article

We proposed a newly designed, maritime lifesaving small distiller consisting of a windmill and a number of horizontal concentric cylindrical partitions in contact with saline-soaked wicks. The wind energy is directly converted to frictional thermal energy in a liquid heat medium forming a thin layer between a rotating shaft directly connected to the windmill and the first cylindrical partition, and the frictional thermal energy is recycled on all cylindrical partitions to increase the productivity of distillate. The proposed distiller can be driven by wind only, without human power or electricity. The blades can be separated or folded when the distiller is stored, and the distiller can have an outside diameter of about 0.15 m and a length of about 0.35 m in storage. The performance of the proposed distiller is analyzed theoretically, and the distiller is predicted to produce 1.5 kg/d or more when a 6 m/s wind blows steadily all day on a sunny or cloudy day, and this amount of fresh water is enough to meet one personʹs daily requirement.