nothing happens when you are expecting it to happen!

First two days on site passed mostly expecting for things :P

Expecting the desalination system and the rest boxes which came only today afternoon instead of yesterday morning, expecting the Photovoltaics company to confirm that no further delays will happen and expecting also for the rector of the university to give authorisation to use a recently -vacant room to set up the system. (The rector had to be involved, since the room was claimed by two different departments and prof.Diamantopoulos had to fight for it).

Monday was mostly the welcoming day and the day to settle down. Lots of administration work, meeting the people of the lab, planning the next steps and procedures, but also settle down in the office, configure computers, netIDs and doing lots of phone calls to trace the membranes-pumps and photovoltaics! 

The good news came today when we finally received our system!  Following Murphy's law, news cannot be only good; We noticed that the boxes didn't arrive in good order, at least on surface. One wheel of the main-system-box was broken, and all the oil from the pump crankcase had leaked out to the wooden support frame.. from down to up! It seems that the box had been turned upside-down! Unfortunately, we didn't have time to test it today since it arrived late, we have to wait until tomorrow to be sure that there is no further damage.

We got also our 1 m3 tank today to store the seawater, cleaned it and modified it with required fittings and valves. We will fill it in tomorrow with real seawater brought from a perfect location. The beach of Agios Onoufrios is 10 min away from the university and is also awarded with the "blue flag" (www.blueflag.org). This may be very useful with respect to fouling of the filters and membranes, since it is one of the cleanest beaches  in crete! 

For pumping the seawater tomorrow, we will use a submersible pump which will be powered using the facilities of a friendly owner of a cantine just 40 metres away from the coast  :)

It is interesting to note that the seawater here has 39000 ppm of TDS (highest number in the interconnected system of the earth's oceanic waters) which makes our desalination effort quite challenging and of course energy costly.

Whats next for tomorrow?

-The PV company will start the installation of the panels early in the morning, and promised to finish in one day (never trust the greeks!).

-Fortunately, we will get the keys of the room where we will set up the system, and we have to start by cleaning the place (it looks like it has not been used the last 10 years), then connect  electronics, tubes and pumps, and then flush the system with Demiwater. Hopefully, there is no damage from the transport (i try to win my pessimism)..

-If everything goes well, we will pump and bring the seawater in the afternoon and fill our tank.

Andres and me have to note that we get a lot of help and advice from the people at the lab people and prof.Diamantopoulos. Especially we are very grateful to Nikos Vakondios, a phD student who is greatly involved in our project and gives great help in practical things.

PS: Next days will be busier and more tiring and i will not have the time to write long posts like this, luckily for you :)

Tomorrow seems to be a very busy day ..

Goodnight from Crete,

Valia