Like every year, the Science Factor competition honors the projects of middle and high school students. And while France is preparing for an unprecedented drought, many teams have decided to take on our water problems.
« We know we need to save waterbegins Hermine, second in Charleville-Mézières. At home, we already collect cold water at the beginning of the shower, before it is hot, in a bucket. » How many frozen hectoliters are actually lost each year, while we are waiting for mild temperatures? Inspired by this daily practice, the high school student set up the “Ecol’eau” project with three other friends.
→ ARCHIVE. In the Science Factor competition, young people full of solutions
« Our prototype is placed under the shower head, to collect the water for a few seconds and reinject it into the toilet next doorshe describes. This adapts to all showers, and is fixed in the joints of the tiles. For the moment, only a cardboard model has been built, but the group has conducted a long reflection on the materials and the concept with a neighboring engineering school.
Successful projects
The young woman would like to see this project succeed. ” We have done market and profitability studies, the cost of the device would be around 50 eurosCipher Ermine. For a family of 4, it would become profitable in 2 or 3 years of use. The dream of materialization is not so crazy, if we believe the example of three former projects of the competition which will be inaugurated this year.
Among them, the “In’eau” system, to alert residents of a flood. Designed by the Lilou-Anne team in 2019, it is to be inaugurated in Wallers, in the North, on Wednesday June 1. The young woman does not hide her pride in seeing the project come to fruition. ” This required work, with the teachers, with the town hall, which supported us a lot, and with specialists “, she admits. A developer notably helped with the programming of the prototype, which will be installed at the level of a stream with easy overflows.
Whether there is too much or too little, Lorena, a high school student from Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, wanted to do something useful with water, “ that it serves to the maximum “. Based on the model of hydropower plants, his team thought about how to install small generators and turbines in each home and use rainwater and wastewater to produce electricity. For the moment, the idea is stopped at the stage of the diagram. ” But just having to explain the project to my family taught me how to popularize! smiles Lorena. A gateway like any other into the scientific world.