Introduction: Emergency Backpack

In the year 2017, in the cost of Peru a huge natural disaster result in a lot of lost, houses, electricity, food, even human lives were severely affected by the floods. The main difficulties for people were the lack of clean potable water or energy in their own house, cause the level of the water was too high and Since this event, the Peruvian government gave different recommendations to civilians in order to keep them prevent in any kind of emergency. One of this is an emergency backpack that should have canned food, blankets, water, first aid, and others. Taking note of the two principal difficulties in natural disaster, we designed accessories fir this backpack, first we implemented a solar panel to charge cellphones, when people it’s out of electricity, and a water filtrate only with things that anyone can find in their house.

Step 1: Materials

Step 2: Solar Panel

The voltage of the solar panel need to be measure with a voltmeter and it was made sure that it is suitable for the cellular load (5-6v).Then you should connect diode and solder to the positive port on the back of the panel. The negative (black) cable should be connected and soldered to the negative port of the panel. The positive (red) wire have to be connected to the negative part of the diode. The other ends of the cables need to be connected to the USB port, also called USB jack, as in the image.

Step 3: Filter Bottle

In this case it's more easy to built it, you only need to follow the steps:

  • Cut the 1.5 L bottle through the back.
  • Place cotton in the mouth of the bottle.
  • Place the activated carbon .
  • Place the fine sand.
  • Place the coarse sand.
  • Place the small stones with the gauze on the surface.

It is important to remained that in such a way that the finest was placed in the lower part and the thicker in the upper part.

Step 4: Some Recommendations...

The correct operation of the solar panel was achieved and the cellular load was checked. However, as it is a photovoltaic panel, in case of cloudy sky and there is no direct contact with the sun, there will be no charge.

The best way to make our backpack more efficient is to replace the photovoltaic panel with a thermodynamic one, but its cost would increase "significantly".

The bottle filters water that can not be of direct consumption, unless a drop of bleach is added and left to rest for 30 minutes. And you also have to change activated carbon every so often to continue filtering water.