CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
12 January 2009
Implementation Investments
Creating Drinking Water from Thin Air
More than one billion human beings lack access to clean water, according to the United Nations. The rest arguably pay too much for water infrastructure, transportation, and packaging.
That’s why Island Sky® Corp. USA, based in Hollywood, Fla., has developed a patented technology for transforming water vapor from the atmosphere into potable water. This is the latest in a long line of sustainability-focused innovations designed with SolidWorks® 3D CAD software.
“High-quality water is typically transported from springs, distilled, perhaps packaged, and transported again, leaving a considerable carbon footprint,” said Island Sky Vice President of Engineering George Dubois. “Our mission is to provide low cost, high-quality drinking water to people in every corner of the world and to supply critical emergency drinking water equipment to relief agencies for crisis areas where potable water is unavailable.”
Island Sky has developed two water-making products: Skywater® 14, a home/office model, and Skywater® 300, a larger outdoor model just entering mass production. The multipatented devices consist of more than 400 parts each, designed from top to bottom in SolidWorks, and produce as many as 1,100 liters per day.
Other green breakthroughs designed in SolidWorks include:
• The BigBelly® trash bin, the world’s only on-site solar-powered trash compactor;
• UV-light drinking water disinfection systems from Trojan Technologies;
• The Reee chair, a stackable chair made entirely from discarded video game consoles; and
• Whole-house systems designed by Greentec Systems featuring solar panels, air filtration units, under-floor heating, and other products that reduce dependence on oil, gas, or electricity.
Creating Drinking Water from Thin Air –
“There’s an urgent demand for our products, as you might imagine, so development speed is of the essence,” George Dubois said. “SolidWorks is an excellent tool that helps us work very quickly. We conserve time, money, and material resources by carefully studying all our prototypes in SolidWorks so the first physical assembly works perfectly. Our team has a long and varied design resume, including aerospace and medical, and SolidWorks was simply the logical choice. Our manufacturing partners use SolidWorks, too, so communication is simple.”
For more information on SolidWorks and sustainable design, visit: http://www.solidworks.com/pages/minisite/SustainableResource/index.html.
Island Sky relies on authorized SolidWorks reseller The SolidExperts for ongoing software training, implementation, and support.
SolidWorks and SolidWorks Simulation are products of Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. (DS SolidWorks).
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