Sunday, November 3, 2019

Government Technical College Students, Uyo, Designed and Constructed an Award Winning Automatic Water Level Controller

Image result for automatic water level controller
Students of Government Technical College, Ewet, Uyo, in Akwa Ibom State, have once again proven that they are truly engineers in the making. They emerged overall winners in the NTA ETV National Children’s Arts and Science Expo 2019, held in Abuja from October 20 to 24 with the Hydro and Power Control System, which they designed and constructed in their school, and took to the competition.
Earlier, the school had taken the first position in the state selection exercise organised by the NTA in Uyo, which paved the way for their participation at the Abuja exhibition. The school has in its effort to develop science and technological skills in the students helped them to form what they call Explorers Company, in the school. The company aims at solving many human, social, health and educational problems of society, using electronic, electrical, scientific and technological ideas.
The Explorers Company has in the past designed and created a number of products and put them in the market and exhibited some at different shows. Among them are Explorers lamps – used for charging lamps; mosquito repellants – to check the spread of mosquitoes and water level controller; all of which they exhibited at a recent Junior Achievements Nigeria show in Lagos and took the fifth position. They plan to exhibit their products and present papers at a national conference of Nigerian Society of Engineers.
The integrated system may soon become the desire of every home and office for its offering of several solutions in the areas of water supply and power switching from different sources of water supply. Before the invention, the students had noticed that water pumped to the reservoir in their school overflowed, with the water direction causing erosion, water wastage and excessive burning of fuel or consumption of power while the reservoir itself was rusting. This made them decide to create a system that could fix the problems.
Thereafter, the students designed and constructed an automatic water level controller – a device that could detect and control the level of water in a water tank or a similar water storage system. Their invention was amazing! The devise senses the level of water that is available in the tank through the detector level.
It will then adjust the state of the water pump in accordance with the water level information, achieving automation through sequential logic attained by a flip-flop. The electronic design has a LED indicator and a relay-based motor pump driving circuit. During demonstrations, the students would showcase the system which pumps automatically and turns on when the tank is empty (green LED indicator turns on during this process.) But when the tank is full, it turns off the pump (the blue LED indicator turns on). When the devise was showcased at the Uyo competition, it beat the inventions of other schools and groups. It was the celebration of their work at Uyo that encouraged the students to improve upon the quality and attributes of the automatic power controller to include automatic power change-over and automatic starter circuit.
Their success at this invention prompted them to carry out the design and construction of an automatic power changeover switch. The switch helps in changing automatically the source of power supply at the home, eatery, business centre or office. “With this device, there will not be any need for manual change-over.
This means that whenever there is power outage in any electrical appliances, the device will automatically switch over to a standby supply without causing any noticeable distortion”, explains Master Peter Isidore Bassey, the student CEO of Explorers Company, who was at the Abuja exhibition with his colleagues – Sampson Sam Sampson, Ndiana Christopher Sunday and Rutherford Edet Ekop, all vice presidents of the company. Volunteer teacher, Mrs. Joyce Emmanuel Manoah, who accompanied them to the Abuja event and school principal, Dr. Udo Etukudo David, were full of gratitude to the students for their proud representation of their school.
The school has been celebrating the students ever since. Manoah said of the students’ feat “They (students) have been able to translate information into something that could be seen, thereby activating disruptors.” It was learnt that various organisations including NTA Uyo have been celebrating the students since their return from the Abuja exhibition.
But GTC, Ewet, Uyo, is not new to winning trophies. In 2015, they won one as the first runner-up for a choreography performance on Governor Udom Emmanuel’s Dakkada slogan. In 2016, during the 40th anniversary of National Council of Arts and Culture, the school won the first position prize for its art and sculptor presentation.


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