Any solar powered distillation plans for water purification??

[Vincerama2]

Just wondering if there are any workable plans around for something that could use solar power to evaporate water and re-condense it to distill tap water into useable fresh water?

I'm just wondering, since there have lately been many threads on RO/DI (I have a decent eBay one, though many would trash it because it's not a Spectrapure, etc, etc...) and I was wondering what alternatives there would be for low volume (ie; top off) pure water production?

I mean, ultimately, it would be cool if you could simply recapture the water evaporated from your tank, but that would be kinda hard!

I was thinking of that (Ridiculously stupid) movie "Waterworld" where Kevin Costner pees in some device, which turns it into water that he drinks.

I figure (aside from bacterial problems maybe?) that if you could simply keep something in the sun so that water evaporated from it, then recondensed it again (even like a container that is partly in the sun and partly in the shade?) that would be a slow but reasonable way to purify water.

I know that bacteria or algae might be a problem. What if you had salty tap water? That would limit bacterial growth?

I dunno, any ideas?

This is strictly in the spirit of DIY curiosity and attempting to provoke some interesting conversation, not and attempt to get people to write back "Why don't you just buy a good RO unit" because that's not the point.


V

 

[coralnut99]

Don't know if you're familiar with a publication called Mother Earth News, but there was a diy water distillation spread in there same months ago. The magazine's been out there for eons, and I would bet it's been covered more than once. If I remember it right, it covered the topic from a pretty broad perspective, running down electric distillers you can buy to real grass roots diy projects.

 

[coyoteseven]

Here's the plan to a very simple water distiller for survival purposes (notice it also mentions the use of urine and saltwater):

http://www.fabuloustravel.com/campers/camping/solarstill.html

And one for a larger scale, more permanent setup:

http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/sstill.htm

HTH

 

[Matt Rise]

If I remember correctly the island of Aruba has the largest water distillation facility on the planet. The water didn't taste too bad IMO....