Thursday, 8 January 2015

How Fresh Water Generator is Practical in Ships

Drinkable water is needed in great amounts on a ship because once they set sail they do not come back to the land for several days and even weeks. A Fresh Water Generator manufactured in Singapore makes it possible to convert salt water of sea into sweet drinkable water. This water is then used for the purpose of drinking, cooking and washing. Not to mention, ship mechanics demand the use of cool and salt free water in the machinery for cooling purposes.

There are two things found abundantly in a ship, lots of heat and lots of water to sail on. So, majorly, a ship fulfils its need of fresh water by simply heating the salt water through any mean, making it free from salts and minerals. Typically, the heat used in the process comes from the engine of the ship. There is a catch by the way, as it is known that water boils at 100 degrees. The engine of ship produces only as much heat as to click 70. This is clearly insufficient for a Fresh Water Generator to produce pure drinking water. In order to overcome this problem, the engineering geniuses found out a way to decrease the pressure of atmosphere inside the heating chamber to kick the heating process up a notch. Atmospheric pressure is decreased by creating a vacuum that also cools the evaporated water as a bonus. This water is collected in a tank because cool water on a ship can be a valuable resource.

Cost of drinking water generation decides which type of a ship uses what method for water generation. In the passenger ships, where voyagers are the ones who are to face the cost of water they consume, reverse osmosis is the prevailing method used for generation of drinking water. Also, this method is known to produce a lot of water in short while. However, these perks cost a lot. On the contrary, merchant ships that have few crew members who have nothing to call luxury use simple evaporation method that, as mentioned before, uses sea water and ship’s engine heat.

A Fresh Water Generator comprises of two huge containers, one is called as condenser and the other is called evaporated. An educator produces the necessary vacuum for the process. There are a few things to consider for the managers of the ship before they start their Fresh Water Generator. A few of them are mentioned here below.
  •        The ship needs to be at a good distance from shore and from canals to generate healthy water. When close to the shore, sewage water may be present in the sea water and where the Fresh Water Generator effectively removes salts and minerals from water, it does not remove pollutants equally well. 20 nautical miles is universally considered as a safe limit.
  •          The engine needs to be running at least 50 rpm at the time of water generation because otherwise it simply fails to produce enough heat and pressure to evaporate the salt water. Also, the drainage needs to be in off position at the time of water generation.
  •           The intake and outlet of sea water needs to be in a good shape and blockage free. Sea water needs to be filtered for small fish and weed before it goes in and needs to be flushed out very quickly from the outlet after passing through the Fresh Water Generator.
  •           The ideal vacuum for drinkable water generation is 90% or more, anything less than this would produce water that is not entirely free of salts and minerals.  It normally takes 10 minutes  for this much vacuum to create.  

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