Chapter 11 – Pure Water, Check

Mk23 -IRJ Droplet – Class 7 – Carpe Victoria (Wrecked)

Sector - Unknown

Planet - Unknown

9rth May 2341 (BSST)

In the morning I examine the tank I have made. The fire has all but burnt out. A pile of ashes. White grey dust with specs of charred wood. Smoke rises from the pile gently, wafting this way and that. Dancing in the gentle breeze that barely disturbs a thing. It was drier last night, and the ground has cracks running through. Shallow and numerous they leech dust up to the surface. As I step the dust is kicked up in little swirling tornados that follow my tracks before settling down in a thin layer. Like a silt on the sea floor.

Clearing out the pile of ash takes me only a few moments. It sticks to my hands though. Perhaps a static charge. Who knows? I rub my hands together and watch as it falls off to be carried away by the wind.

Everything seems to be okay with the set up. So, I get ready to build the next section. Exploring the forest provides me with about ten sticks with a fork at the top. Between the two holes I ram the sticks into the ground. The height of the fork decreases until the joint is resting on the floor. On the other side of the tank the sticks raise up until they extend to about my height and curve round back towards the stream. In between the two tanks on the forks I rest another curved clay section. It fits in with a bit of wiggling into the hole in the tank joining almost perfectly with the section of pipe already in the tank. More clay smooths the joint out. The open piping extends down supported by the forks until the end rests on the floor about twenty centimetres short of the underground tank. When I wanted water to enter the tank I could place a short section under the end to allow water to flow into the reservoir. The reason I didn’t want to have the piping extend into the pipe was twofold. First, I would like to avoid contamination by making section uncleanable. And second it would make retrieving water to drink much harder if I had to shift the piping out of the way every time.

Similar to the design inside the tank another u-bend section of clay pipe rests on top of the one I have just fitted. It too slots into the hole and clay seals the joint just perfectly. This one extends down resting on the other until in the last third of the length it curves away in an s shaped bend to rest on one of the stones downstream of the pool.

A cover section of pipe then slots into the section of exposed piping below where the upper section curves off. It fits quite snugly and wraps around the curve of the leaving pipe. This section is not joined with more clay for reasons explained earlier. I want to be able to clean the pipe.

With that done the lower section of piping is done.

The upper section of piping proves to be much harder to install. It is after all above head height. It joins with the tank in much the same way as it does at the bottom. Clay to mould the joint and supported by the numerous forks. The clay piping curves to rest up on the bank of the cliff. I place an inverted section to create a fully covered pipe and then dig up dirt to support the end. Once it is covered and compacted I feel like I am nearly done.

It is almost ready for the first test run. Setting a fire takes only fifteen minutes thanks to the improved fire sticks and then a further half an hour to stoke the fire and get it going. From my first wood collecting run I have nearly run out. I let the fire burn for a half hour before I think the clay moulding the joints will have firmed up enough for the apparatus be of use. It is by no means fired but it should be good enough until I can replace the joints with lime mortar. Unfortunately, I have found no available source as of yet.

In the bottom end I shift the cover off the reservoir slightly leaving enough of a gap for a section of pipe to guide water into it. At the top I insert a section of pipe into the mouth of the buried one and dip the other end into the stream higher up.

With baited breath I look on. Water separates from the main stream and follows my clay aqueduct path down the piping into the tank before exiting in the upper layer and tracing the bottom piping before splitting off and re-entering the stream well below of where the water exited.

Both the water intake and water exit pipes were working well with. I only needed to modify the flow rate slightly. Decreasing the flow rate only required placing a stone slate above the pipe to redirect water around it. Some more fiddling and I managed to get a fairly constant stream of water. About the same rate as pouring water from a water bottle. Only constant.

Filling the tank with water took me several trips with my small pot. But soon I had it done and placed the cover on.

I sat watching the end of the piping for a good hour before the first drop entered my reservoir.

The system worked as a basic distillation set up. In regular distillation a round bottom flask is heated with either an open flame like from a Bunsen burner or with an electric hotplate. When the liquid, in this case water reaches its boiling point water vapour rises up the glass connecting tubes until it reaches a Liebig condenser.

The Liebig condenser is a slanted glass tube with a secondary glass layer around it. This secondary glass layer has two glass joints where water flows in from the lower end and out from the upper end. This cold-water jacket lowers the temperature of the hot vapour travelling inside until the vapour condenses on the cold surface and runs out of the piping into a receiving vessel. Since the water is flowing it is always cold enough for the vapour to condense on.

Usually a thermometer is placed at the surface interface to get an accurate measurement of the temperature at the liquid gas interface. Knowing the temperature at the interface allows you to modulate the temperature by applying more or less heat.

This is important because distillation is usually used as either a separating or purifying apparatus for mixtures. If you had say, a mixture of an ether and water both constituents of the liquid mixture would have boiling points with the ether being lower in value than the water. Keeping the surface temperature above that of the ethers boiling point but below the waters boiling point would cause only the ether to vaporise and thus you could collect only the ether in a receiving vessel.

In my case I think I only have water and some insoluble impurities. So, when the water vaporises the vapour will enter the pipe through the small holes and then condense against the other clay pipe with the cold-water flow from the stream before running down the piping and entering the tank to be stored for my use. As I was pondering how the system worked I noticed that the flow rate was increasing but it was nowhere near what I expected.

“Enigma, can you do a thermal scan and tell me the temperature of the clay tank please?”

“The clay tank is at approximately 400 kelvins, well within operating temperatures of the clay and above the boiling point of water.”

“So why are we only getting a few drops?”

“Perhaps the water is condensing inside the tank and falling back into the water.”

“Refluxing it to no effect.” I said back disheartened. Getting up from my place on the floor I knelt in a damp spot. Odd, this ground is extremely desiccated. Dry as a bone on the surface. Lower down the water from the stream leeches into the soil and saturates it but at the surface it is dry.

Looking for a cause tells me what I wanted to know. The water has condensed but as water tends to do it is running down the cold pipe instead of falling into the bottom pipe. This means it is following the s-shape bend and re-entering the stream.

Taking the cover off the lowest section I grab a small stone, wash it in the stream before placing it in between the two pipe layers. Water that hits it should follow gravity and run along its length before hitting the bottom pipe and being directed into my reservoir as it should have been all along.

With this modification water begins to flow at a pretty decent rate. Stoking the fire one last time with the last off the wood I have should get me to the end of the water supply.

With water secured I really should go hunting but I still feel like I should stay close to monitor the progress. So, I decide after some deliberation to build an adze. First, I need a stone, hunting around I find a good one. It is decently shaped already. About the width of my hand and a little longer than my hand. It takes a while but soon with a process of hammering and grinding I have a decent sized axe blade. Searching the forest, I find a branch that looks good for the handle. It is a hard wood, so it takes me a while to cut it down.

The wood is smooth, no cracked, gnarled awful bark but smooth almost paper like bark. At one end it has a huge knot and at a right angle sticks out another limb to give an L-shape. Cutting the limb down to size about two to three centimetres longer than my palm takes a while.

Using the stone as a chisel I slowly, methodically trim down the short section to about half width. If I was holding it the trimmed section would be the top half providing a flat surface for the axe blade to rest on.

Once I’m done with that I re-sharpen the axe blade and lash it to the surface with the lashings. The cane like lashings provides a firm bonding and when I smother it in sap and then bind once again with the lashings the axe head feels secure. The knot of the handle will act as a backstop and just the whole handle in general allows for the dissipation of energy so that my hands don’t jar as much when I hit. The handle flexes and absorbs the energy so I won’t bruise my hands as I did before.

Throwing the scraps of the adze making process onto the fire I set off to get some more wood.

An adze is very similar to an axe with the only difference being that the axe has a blade in parallel to the handle whilst an adze has one at right angles. Modern adze’s have curved blades. Since my axe blade is situated at right angles it is an adze. With primitive technology an adze is much easier to make and whilst being only slightly less effective at cutting trees because you can’t hit in two opposing directions like an axe it still cuts well enough. Depending on the tree type, an adze can, instead of chipping away at the tree taking sections of wood with it, instead compact the fibrous thin scraps left after sections leave the tree into a springy mess of wood fibre that doesn’t have a regular grain. This can make cutting a real nightmare.

With a regular axe since the cut can be in two directions then the fires left from a downwards cut are often removed by the upwards cut that follows directly after.

Still, testing the adze on a tree, I cut down the tree in ten minutes. About as thick as my thigh and though not hardwood it is still relatively tough. With this I will be able to make a decent stock of fire wood.

By now the water is about half done so I decide to build a wood shed. In a square format I place sticks deep in the ground. The front two about a half meter taller than the back two. A simple lashed wooden stick roof works well and the last of the fronds make the roof waterproof. More wooden sticks provide a raised floor about shin height and some cross beams between the poles makes the whole structure more secure.

Using the old axe head that I used to cut down trees as a splitter I place it in the section of tree trunk. Then drop a big stone on it. The sheer mass of the stone drives the splitting blade through the logs. Grabbing the two sections I rip them apart using my suit to boost my strength.

Splitting the logs into quarters allows me to stack them easily in the wood shed. Just outside of the tepee section of my shelter it will be nice and close to hand.

Shortly before night the water finishes distilling so I disconnect the water flow and close the lid to the reservoir, after taking a few nice gulps of water of course. Leaving the fire going to firm up the clay joints further I head to bed, happy to let the fire burn itself out.