Summer One of the Laidlaw program allowed me to work on exciting self-directed research. For my project, I choose to work on a specific problem area in clean water. 

Providing many parts of the world with potable water is a challenge as old as time. It is highlighted in GOAL 6 of the UN sustainable development goals.  One of the larger contributors to the global potable water scarcity is heavy metal poisoning. Heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury leech into natural drinking water supplies due to mining and farming, rendering the water poisonous for humans to drink. Traditional cleaning methods such as boiling or filtering don't remove these metals from the water. Current measures to combat metal contamination are inefficient and wasteful. For example, a reverse osmosis membrane delivers 19 litres of treated water per day, delivered up to 340 litres of wastewater daily. Large water treatment plants in areas of heavy poisoning such as Africa, South America and India are not an option due to infrastructure and budget constraints.

For my research project, I set out to design a cost-effective, tabletop, energy-efficient device to remove heavy metals from drinking water. I determined that distillation was the most effective way to ensure not only heavy metals were removed, but that any other contaminants were killed and removed also. Distillation vapourises the clean water and separates it aside from the remaining unclean water, ready to drink. It has not been used in the past due to its heavy energy requirement. However, In large-scale distillation in breweries, heat recovery methods are used to capture back waste heat and improve the energy efficiency and cost of the process. I choose to use vapour compression recovery to recapture waste heat and repurpose it to aid in the vaporization stage. 

I built and tested the device in the Fluids and Heat Transfer Lab at Trinity College Dublin. I compared the device without the heat recovery cycle to the device, with the heat recovery cycle added. Adding this vapour compression cycle had positive effects on the performance of the distiller. The effect was as intended with more flow of distillate (clean water) being produced for similar energy consumptions ie the efficiency had increased. Further work should be done in the analysis of the distillate the device produces as well as shrinking the device's envelope for logistical reasons.

Working on the project throughout the covid pandemic was a challenging experience. The pandemic caused reduced lab hours and technical support. This forced me to work faster and with a greater level of autonomy. I also became ill with Covid-19 and missed two weeks of my project. I was anxious about returning to work and was still incredibly fatigued. I now had to approach my work sustainably, allowing time for rest and recovery. This was a huge contrast to my initial few weeks of work. The two weeks of sickness put a stop to all the momentum I had gathered leaving me dissociated and distant from my work. I credit the week after returning, for learning a lot of resilience, determination and self-motivation. By using these skills and putting my head down, I got back to work and gathered momentum once more. It was a difficult challenge but a huge lesson for me and has made me a better leader.