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During the recent slushy weather, many drivers will have found themselves using their windscreen washers a lot more than usual. As such, many will have felt the frustration of trying to spray their windscreens only to hear the hum of the motor trying to draw water from an empty reservoir. If only someone had thought of putting some kind of rainwater harvesting system in a car...
Well now someone has, and it's not some clever-clogs engineer. The idea is the brainchild of two German children, Daniel and Lara Krohn.
Daniel and Lara were travelling in their family car last summer when they were caught in a sudden heavy shower. As their dad, Gerd, tried to clear the muck and water smears from the windscreen he realised the washer reservoir was empty. The windscreen kept getting dirtier.
"It was a downpour. There was water everywhere - except in the windscreen wiper reservoir. My sister and I thought this was really funny and then the answer suddenly seemed obvious. Simply reuse the rainwater," said 11-year-old Daniel.
"We couldn't believe that no-one had thought of it before," added 9-year-old Lara. "To try it out, we took apart our toy fire engine and fixed the pump to a model car inside an aquarium. Then we added a filtering system to ensure the water was clean. It just worked really well."
Daniel and Lara then took their idea to a local science competition, which they won and it wasn't long before engineers at Ford caught wind of their research. The engineers decided to test Daniel and Lara's simple concept on a full-size Ford S-Max. They connected the bottom of the windscreen to the washer reservoir via a series of rubber pipes.
"Daniel and Lara's idea has been staring drivers in the face for decades - and it has taken one moment of ingenuity to bring it to life. In less than five minutes of rainfall the washer reservoir is completely full," said Theo Geuecke, a supervisor in the Body Exterior Hardware department at Ford of Europe.
With growing populations and increased strain on water supplies, technologists including those at Ford, are having to rexamine the ways we use water and look for ways to reduce water waste. Water usage by vehicles is expected to increase as additional cameras and sensors also need to be kept clean. Ford engineers are already working on ways to capture water, via rain and condensation, including a way of gathering moisture from the air and filtering it into drinking water.
According to the company: "Drivers use around 20 litres each year to keep their windscreens clean. With 291 million cars on European roads, if such a 'Krohn' system was in every car, it would save almost six billion litres of water each year."
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