A CERAMIC WATER COOLER

BY

MUTSYABA VICTOR

A RESEARCH REPOT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE WITH EDUCATION OF

KYAMBOGO UNIVERSITY

AUGUST 2016
 DECLARATION

I Mutsyaba Victor do hereby declare that this research was done by me and the report has
never been submitted to any Institution for an academic award.

Signed: …………………

Date: ……………………
 APPROVAL

This is to certify that this research by Mutsyaba Victor entitled “ A Ceramic water cooler”
was done under my supervision. The report is now ready for submission to Board of
Examiners and the Senate of Kyambogo University with my approval.

Signed: ………………………………

Supervisor: Dr. Oriada Richard

Date: ………………………
 DEDICATION

I dedicate this research report to my beloved parents Mr. Banyomoza Deus Kashaho and the
entire family for their great support ranging from financial, guidance, love, comfort and
courage in particular during the course of coming up with this research report.
May the good Lord reward them abundantly.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost I would like to thank the Almighty God who kept me healthy throughout
the entire period of carrying out the research.

I extend my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Oriada Richard for his
devoted help and professional advice that enabled me do this research work.

I take this opportunity to thank the Kyambogo University staff through the Department of
Physics and its lectures Mr. Enjiku Ben (Head of Department Physics), Mr. Wefafa Peter,
Mr.Kabagambe, Assoc.Prof. Mucunguzi Eric and others for their knowledge, courage and
wisdom that has made me pass through this institution. Technicians Mr. Kawuki Joseph and
Mr. Bamukyaye Sam, I thank them for their technical support and assistance.

I extend my thanks to my father Mr. Banyomoza Deus Kashaho and other family members
for they have supported me financially, morally, spiritually and socially throughout in all my
academic endeavors. May God reward them accordingly.

Lastly I acknowledge the support I have received from my friends and all course mates who
helped during the course of research. I pray that God reward them abundantly.
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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Water is a polar inorganic compound that is at room temperature tasteless and odorless liquid,
nearly colourless with a hint of blue. It is by far the most studied compound and is described as a
“Universal solvent” for its ability to dissolve many substances. It is commonly found in its solid,
liquid, and gas forms in nature.

Water forms a big portion of the land in form of streams, lakes, oceans and rain and is the major
constituent of the fluids of living things. Water is liquid at standard ambient temperature and
pressure, but often co-exists on earth with its solid state(ice) and gaseous state(steam of water
vapour).

Water covers 71% of the earth’s surface. It is vital for all known forms of life. On earth 96.5% of
the planets water is found in seas and oceans, 1.7% in glaciers and the ice cups of Antarctica and
Greenland, a small fraction in other large waterbodies and 0.001% in the air as vapour clouds
and precipitation.

Domestic water is water used for indoor and outdoor household purposes. That is all things we
do at home such as drinking, preparing food, bathing, washing clothes and dishes, brushing our
teeth and watering the yard or garden. Water generally gets to our homes in one of the two ways;
either it is delivered by a city / country water department or may be from a private company or
people supply their own water normally from the well. Water delivered to homes is called public
supplied deliveries and water that people supply themselves is called self-supplied and is almost
always from ground water. After anemergency such as floods hurricane or earth quake, drinking
water may not be available or safe to drink. As result residents may have to find a source of safe
drinking water or know how to treat their water for use in certain activities such as drinking,
making ice, preparing food, washing hands and brushing teeth.

Cleaning of water involves a number of steps as discussed below;

Water is passed through mesh screens like a sieve to remove sticks, waterweeds and other large
foreign objects. Air is often forced into the water by running it down a tower, spraying it into the
air or bubbling it. The air helps to get rid of some smell and gas from the water and allows some
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dissolved metal salts to separate and be filtered out. Secondly at this stage there are still some
very tiny pieces of matter in the water along with colour and bacteria. The Severn Trent water
adds a precisely controlled amount of coagulant like Ferric or Aluminum Sulphate. This reacts
with water making it all stick together to form what is known as “Floc”. To make this
flocculation happen, water and the coagulant have to be mixed together very quickly and
thoroughly in a special device called a flash mixer. Next comes the clarification process. The
floc forms itself into a sludge and it is separated in a specially designed tank called a clarifier.
This sludge layer is called the sludge blanket. To control the blanket, sludge is periodically
drained off, concentrated and removed for safe disposal. In the third step of cleaning water, water
is filtered slowly through very fine sand like material. This removes any remaining particles. For
some river waters they use ozone gas injection as a treatment stage. This can work in conjunction
with granular activated carbon treatment where the water is filtered through granules to take out
any undesirable traces of natural organic materials. Then, the water is filtered and thoroughly
cleaned.it is dis infected to make sure that no harmful bacteria remains. A small controlled
amount of chlorine the most effective method and provides essential human protection. This
method is used across the world. Adjustments are made to the pH levels of water during
treatment process so it is neither too acidic nor too alkaline. This helps pipework fittings and
water itself. The use of unclean water for some activities like drinking preparing food, brushing
teeth washing clothes has got a number of associated problems among which include water borne
diseases like diarrhea. Diarrhea is caused by a variety of microorganisms including viruses,
bacteriaand protozoan. This disease causes apersonto lose both water and electrolytes which
leads to dehydration and in some case to death. About 4 billion cases of diarrhea per year cause
1.8 million deaths (over 90% are children under 5 years).Diarrhoea is the most important public
health problem directly related to water and sanitation. Arsenic in drinking water causes painful
skin, keratosis and can result into cancer of the skin, lungs, bladder and kidney. Millions of
people are potentially in danger from arsenic poisoning since they rely on water supplied (mainly
from natural resources) that are contaminated with arsenic and other viruses. Cholera is another
acute bacterial infection of the intestinal tract. It causes several attacks of diarrhea that without
treatment can quickly lead to heavy dehydration and death. It can be prevented by access to safe
drinking water, sanitation ad good hygiene.
 3

Therefore, after an emergency water needs to cleaned and stored in special containers which
include commercial bottled water with expiration date and they are considered as the best way to
store water. However, when storing your own, use a food grade container such as plastic soft
drink bottle or a clean ceramic pot. Clean ceramic water pots are advantageous to store water in
they enable continuous cooling and are cheap compared to other containers but they are fragile
and very heavy. Some containers including ceramic pots are designed to keep the water cool.
Drinking iced water is one of the ways to harness the mechanism for weight loss since the body
must compensate for the sudden temperature drop. In addition, cold water is absorbed more
quickly into the human body than warm water helping to rehydrate more quickly hence a need to
cool water for drinking.

1.2 Statement of the problem

The ministry of health of Uganda has been sensitizing people to take boiled water but most of the
people especially in rural areas have not adopted the habit because boiled water takes long time
to cool. They don’t have fast water cooling systems like refrigerators and hence resort to taking
cold unboiled water leading to water borne diseases like Typhoid and Bilharzia among others.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to design a ceramic water cooler that is able to cool water faster to a
temperature below the room temperature.

1.4 Objectives of the Study

i. To increase the rate at which a ceramic water cooler cools boiled water.

ii. To fabricate a ceramic water cooler that cools boiled drinking water faster.

1.5 Research Question

Which porosity is best for a Ceramic water cooler used for cooling and storing boiled drinking
water?
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1.6 Scope of the Study

The study was conducted in different areas including the following major ones;

Physics laboratory (West End), Kyambogo University to perform the experiments on the
Porosity of different Ceramic Water coolers.

1.7 Significance of the Study

Through reading information from different sources like Text books, the Internet, and from
different experts about cooling in Ceramic water coolers have increased my academic and
general understanding of how cooling as a method of preserving food can be executed in the
absence of electric power. The knowledge about advanced refrigeration in ceramic water coolers
like a Zeer pot was my major achievement from this study.

The study was considered one of themost vital tools in Kyambogo University that has helped me
bring up different skills like researching skills, information analysis skills, observation skills and
social skills that assisted me to in interact with people while collecting data.

The study will guide the local potteries to design Ceramic water coolers that are able to cool
drinking water faster which will encourage people to always boil drinking water. This will help
to curb water borne diseases.
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CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Introduction

This theory outlines the details of the nature of ceramics, theory for metals and insulators in
relation to heat conduction and the theory of heat conduction in general.

2.2 Nature of Ceramics

According to F.W.N Rep.Conf. strength solids 75-78 (Physical Society London, 1948), it is
generally recognized that ceramics frequently offer advantages over metals in their use such as
chemical resistivity, hardness, wear resistance, high melting temperature, low density and low
price. However, the use of ceramics has so far been hampered by their brittleness at low
temperature. We report observations that could open a way to remove these limitations. We
observed that conventionally brittle ceramics became ductile permitting large (≈100%) plastic
deformation at low temperature if a polycrystalline ceramic was generated with a crystal size of
few rim. The ductility seems to originate from the diffusional flow of atoms along the inter
crystalline interfaces. Ceramic quality is often inconsistent, and for the manufacture distribution
is challenged by the sheer, size, weight and fragility of the device.

Figure 2.1: A sample of water cooling pots

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Pottery is the ceramic material that makes up pottery ware of which major types include; earth
ware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such are made is called a pottery. Pottery also
refers to the art or craft of a potter or the manufacturer of pottery. According to the “American
Society for testing materials (ASTM)”, pottery refers to all fired ceramic ware that contain clay
when formed except technical, structural and refractory-products. Pottery is made by forming a
clay body into objects of required shape, heating them to high temperatures in a kiln which
removes all the water from the clay that induces reactions which leads to permanent changes
including increasing their strength, hardening and setting their shape.

The types of atoms present, types of bonding between the atoms and the way the atoms are
packed structure help to determine what type of properties a material will have. Ceramics
usually have a combination of stronger bonds are ionic (occur between metals and non-metals
and involve attraction of opposite charges when electrons are transferred from metals to non-
metals) and covalent (occurs between two non-metals and involves sharing of atoms). The
strength of an ionic bond depends on the size of the charge on each ion and on the radius of each
ion. The greater the number of electrons being shared, the greater the force of attraction or the
stronger the covalent bond. These types of bonds reserved in high elastic modulus and hardness,
high melting points, low thermal expansion and good chemical resistance. On the other hand,
Ceramics are also hard and often brittle which leads to fracture. But not all Ceramics behave this
way., for example graphite is a very soft ceramic and conducts electricity well whereas diamond
is a very good ceramic conductor of heat. Ceramics called ferrites are particularly good
conductors of electricity and super conductors have almost no electrical resistance at all.

Ceramics are generally thought of as inorganic and non metallic solids with a range of useful
properties as mentioned above the best known ceramics are pottery, glass, bricks, porcelain and
cement. Some of the best ceramic materials are combinations of Ceramics and other materials
known as ceramic matrix composites. Porcelain plates, cups, stoves are very familiar examples
of ceramics but there are other more surprising uses of ceramics.

According to Paul Rado (1988) in his book “An introduction to the technology of pottery 2nd
edition” pottery has three common types that is Earthen, Porcelain and stone ware. Earthen ware
is pottery that has not been fired to vitrification and is thus permeable to water. Generally earthen
ware bodies exhibit higher plasticity than most white ware bodies and hence are easier to shape
 7

by RAM press, roller head or potter’s wheel. Due to its porosity, earthenware with water
absorption of 5-8% must be glazed to be water tight. Earthen ware has lower mechanical strength
than bone chine, porcelain or stone ware and consequently articles are commonly made in
thicker cross-section although they are still more easily chipped.

Figure 2.2 A sample of earthen ware pots

According to pottery science: materials, process and products 1986, Porcelain is a ceramic
material made by heating materials including Kaolin in temperatures between 1200oC and
1400o C. The toughest strength and translucence of porcelain arises mainly from the
formation of glass and the mineral mullite within the fired body at this high temperature
porcelain derives its present name from the Old Italian porcellana (Cowrie shell) because of
its resemblance to the translucent surface of the shell. It can informally be referred to as
China or Fine China in some English speaking countries as China was the birth of porcelain
making. Properties associated with porcelain include low permeability and elasticity,
considerable strength, hardness, toughness, whiteness, translucency and resonance, and high
 8

resistance to chemical attack and thermal shock. The combined nomenclature of European
communities defines Porcelain as being “completely verified, hard, impermeable (even
before glazing), white or artificially coloured, translucent (except when of considerable
thickness) and resonant.”

Figure 2.3 A sample of a porcelain pot

Stoneware is another example of a ceramic pot other than earthen ware and porcelain which
is vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stone ware clay or non-refractory
fire clay. Stone ware is fired at high temperatures. It is nom porous and so does not need a
glaze.
 9

Figure2.4 A hand painted stone ware bowl.

According to the combined nomenclature of the European communities, Stone ware which
though dense, impermeable and hard enough to resist scratching by a steel point, differs from
Porcelain because it is more opaque and normally only partially vitrified. It may be vitreous
or semi-vitreous.it is usually coloured grey or brownish because of impurities in the clay
used in its manufacture and is normally glazed.

The key raw material for stone ware is either naturally occurring stoneware clay or non-
refractory fire clay. The mineral Kaolinite is present but disordered and although mica and
quartz are present and their particle size is very small.

2.3 Metals and Insulators

Some materials let heat move through them easily. These materials are called thermal
conductors. Metals for example steel and aluminium are good conductors and such metals are
 10

used to make objects that need to conduct heat very well such as saucepans to make cooking
faster.
On the other hand, other materials do not heat move through them easily and they are called
thermal Insulators. Thermal heat insulators include plastics, wood, some fabrics and ceramics
like clay. Thermal insulators are good at keeping heat out and in such as a winter scarf is a
good example of a thermal insulator. It stops the heat from the body escaping into the cold
air. Plastics as insulators can be used as handles for saucepans. The plastic stops the heat
from travelling to our hands.

2.4 Heat conduction

Conduction is heat transfer by means of molecular agitation with in a material without any
motion of the material as a whole. The natural laws of physics always allow the driving
energy in the system to flow until equilibrium is reached. Heat leaves warmer body or the
hottest fluid as long as there is a temperature difference and will be transferred to the colder
medium. A heat exchanger follows this this principle in its operation to reach equalization.
With a plate type heat exchanger, the heat penetrates the surface that separates the hot
medium from the cold one very easily. It is therefore possible to heat or cool liquids or gases
that have minimal energy levels.
The theory of heat transfer from one medium to another or from one fluid to another is
determined by several basic rules; Heat will always be transferred from a hot medium to a
cold medium, there must always be a temperature difference between the media and the heat
lost by the hot medium is equal to the amount of heat gained by the cold medium except for
losses to the surroundings.

Heat exchanger is a piece of equipment that continually transfers heat from one medium to
another. Heat exchangers are of two main types that is a direct heat exchanger, where both
media are in direct contact with each other. It is assumed that the media are not fixed
together.
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An example of this type of exchanger is a cooling tower, where water is cooled through
direct contact with air. Then the indirect heat exchanger where the media are separated by a
wall through which heat is transferred.