Of all the water on earth, only an incredibly small percentage is available for us to use and drink… the remainder is largely highly salty water, or at best brackish water with unhealthy levels of salt. For much of the western world, where water is plentifully available and piped right to your location this is hardly an issue for concern; but in countries where limited water availability is compounded by heavy pollution and miles of walking each day to collect it, the situation becomes a lot more dire. Enter Italian designer Gabriele Diamanti and his fascinating Eliodomestico.
The deceivingly simple device transforms salty water to clean drinkable water in one day of sun exposure – just by filling the top-mounted black boiler with salty water and tightening the cap. Throughout the day the temperature and pressure grows within the boiler, forcing steam downward through an internal pipe and into a lower collection lid, where it condenses as fresh water and drips into an earthen basen for transport and use. The setup is simple; cheap and easy to reproduce using widely available materials; and works much more efficiently than costly, conventional solar stills.
Diamanti was inspired to create the project by his own extensive travel and by his friends’ work with NGOs. He saw a world stricken by water scarcity as a graduate student at Milan Polytechnic in 2005, and later decided to pursue the interest as an open-source project – meaning the Eliodomestico is free to copy, modify and distribute. It’s just the thing for challenging locations where manufacturing a product often requires creative use of materials and adaptation to local resources.
For more on this beautiful and thirst quenching project, see the video below and Diamanti’s project page on his
personal website.
A graphic detailing the amount of fresh water available to the world – learn more on
Wikipedia.
Read more at http://www.visualnews.com/2012/08/20/simple-solar-oven-transforms-saltwater-to-fresh-water/#pRKcqVliW0PZWIhy.99
This would not be a bad thing for anyone wanting to have a larger capacity general water filter. If this can clean salt water, it can clean lots of other otherwise bad water. With stores of water for the short run, this could be implemented before need became critical. Most of stored water could be used when trips to the questionable water source isn't possible, and refilled from this device... whatever isn't used during a day.
ReplyDeleteYes, we Westerners have it good. But when systems fail, it can go bad quickly. So far, for the most part, most of us just go somewhere else if it all goes bad, easing back home as things improve. But what happens if travel is restricted by a regional major malfunction... or... if it all goes down, even for a few weeks? Most Americans have no idea how to handle that. I already have some tech meant for poorer peoples of the world. It works quite well. Might as well add another piece. It's not a collection, mind you. It is refusing to die just because everything I now depend on stops, but before it up and stops. I should have enough tech to help others, to a degree. But they are going to have to do some of the heavy lifting. Let them use this tech, but ask for a liter per, or such. Never thought I might end up being a low-tech industrial capitalist... Could happen! :p