Eleanor Morgan, ’05, MS ’07, is part of the team that created the winning entry in the first ever “Innovate or Die” contest this spring. The competition, sponsored by bicycle maker Specialized and by Google, challenged participants to create useful pedal-powered machines. In three months, more than 100 inventions were submitted.
Morgan, a product designer at IDEO, and her co-workers—three mechanical engineers and an industrial designer—brainstormed ideas ranging from a machine that would clean up oil spills to a machine that would boil an egg before deciding to address the challenge of water sanitation, which affects billions of people worldwide. Their invention, the Aquaduct, is a three-wheeled bike that transports, filters and stores enough water for a family of 4. As a person pedals, a pump draws water from a large holding tank through the filter and into a smaller, clean tank.
The team modified the frame of a Miami Sun tricycle to make room for the pump and water tank and constructed the body from pieces of surfboard foam, glued together and covered with fiberglass. The filtration system consists of a custom peristaltic pump and a standard cartridge-based carbon filter.
The Aquaduct is just a prototype; it would be too expensive to mass-produce. The next step for Morgan and Co. is to explore more appropriate materials, technologies and processes to make the Aquaduct viable for the developing world.
