A group of students from Canada advanced to the final stage of the international competition for biomimetic design, with an innovative solution for removing trapped air from a water pipe inspired by fish gills
The international competition for students in biomimetic design This year focused on water technologies. The challenge the students received was to examine how nature manages the precious resource of water, and to apply this knowledge in improved management of water systems. 68 teams from around the world, including an Israeli team from the Technological Institute in Holon, submitted biomimetic solutions to challenges in the field of water technologies.
The results of the first stage of the judging were recently announced, and the winner at this stage is a group of civil engineering students from the University of Toronto, who submitted a solution for removing trapped air from a water pipe inspired by fish gills.
In water transport systems that contain trapped air, a higher pressure is required to pump the water. In addition to the energy loss, which is estimated at about 20% excess energy investment for pumping the water (relative to piping without trapped air), this excess pressure may cause leaks, which end in expensive loss of water or infiltration of pollutants into the drinking water. Existing solutions for pumping water, including pumps and valves, are ineffective and do not always solve the problem.
The students report that they went between design challenges in the field of water and organisms for inspiration, until they found the ideal match between the challenge of removing the air from the pipes and the gill systems in fish. "When we looked closely at the gills, we realized that the natural solution applied to the gills could be copied to create an efficient, adaptive and multi-functional facility," the students report.
The gills are made of thin membranes, rich in blood capillaries, which carry blood cells that emit carbon dioxide into the water and absorb oxygen from it. The gas exchange process is carried out through diffusion (concentration cascade). Absorption efficiency is increased by using a counter current mechanism. The flow in the capillaries carrying blood that has not yet absorbed oxygen is opposite to the flow in the capillaries that have absorbed oxygen, thus maintaining a small but uniform oxygen concentration cascade along the entire length of the capillaries. Analogously, the proposed design is based on the placement of a membrane permeable to air (but not to water) along the pipe, which allows the air to flow along the pipe against the direction of the water flow, and to be released in a controlled manner from the system.
The team won $2,500 and will advance to the finals, where they will be required to present a solution closer to implementation. The announcement of the winning group will take place at the Biomimicry for Education conference, which will be held in the USA this coming June.
