This is a little geeky but cool - Power, Water and Refrigeration from one box
h/t Slashdot
New system provides power, water and refrigeration from one source
Gainesville, Fla. — When hurricanes, wars or other emergencies force authorities to respond, three essentials top their list of must-haves: water, electricity and refrigeration.
Now, in a project funded by the U.S. Army, two University of Florida engineers have designed, built and successfully tested a combined power-refrigeration system that can provide all three – and, with further development, be made compact enough to fit inside a military jet or large truck.
“If you’re in a forward base in Iraq, it costs you the same per gallon of water as it does per gallon of fuel,” said William Lear, a UF associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “It would be better to just have to send fuel out there, especially if you could get refrigeration and water out of it – which is what our system achieves.”
Anyone who has ever been involved in moving supplies knows what a huge deal this is. Just the fact that you don’t have to truck water greatly diminshes your logistics footprint freeing up more people for combat duties, or in the case of disaster relief frees up more transport for medical supplies and food.
Similar Independent Sources posts:
- Freakonomics on “the unlikely event of a water landing…”: Anyone who's flown on an airplane whose flight path was going over water has heard the airline song and dance about “in the unlikely event of a wate ...
- Because what Australia really wants is sticky sweaty johns wandering the streets: In an effort to reduce prostitution the government of New South Wales has given local authorities more leeway to act against illegal brothels includin ...
- LA Water: Filled with Irony and other Pollutants: Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick recently discovered that LA's Department of Water and Power spent nearly $90,000 on bottled water over the pas ...
- Terror Scare in LA: Busted Water Main: Close call? A water main blew the other day and was big news in our neighborhood though terrorism was ultimately ruled out as there have been no yo ...
- Nurse Mistakenly Uses Hydrogen Peroxide in Enema with Predictable Results: You can insert your own punchline into this story. Russians visiting a health resort received a rude shock when a nurse used hydrogen peroxide ins ...
