
Solar stills that capture, purify and condense water are one of the most elegant systems I’ve seen for obtaining fresh water. It is simple, passive, eco-friendly and leads one to wonder if such a simple design works for one of our most essential elements couldn’t similar design elegance work for other resource constraint problems? For example: I believe and have heard others say that there is no energy shortage, just look up at the sun, what does exist is a shortage of technology that efficiently converts and stores energy for the masses. In effect all energy resources we burn are inefficient transfer agents of stored energy that at one time came from the sun. Think of it: coal (trees and plants grown from photosynthesis), oil (dinosaurs and plant material that either consumed plants or plant eating animals), wood… The source of all energy is literally the sun which is simply nuclear energy at a safe distance.
But I digress. Water is just as elemental as energy to our existence. Without fresh H2O we will not survive and in a disaster zone water can be very scarce. The controversy around water and wars fought over water rights are endless. Suffice it to say the world is covered with it and we don’t have efficient safe mass production technology available to meet all the demands.
The solar still concept is not new. I learned about the simple idea in a wilderness class I’d taken years ago. The instructor indicated that it originated from the native Americans and they probably learned it from someone else. I had been fascinated by the design and wondered if there is a way to optimize the design so it could be used for quick deployment in a disaster zone or to supply residential housing. Simply combining it with an efficient cistern and aqueduct system might be enough to keep the needed supply at hand.
Now consider this, if a solar still can capture enough water in the desert, how much water can it capture in a non-desert climate? If we get individuals to be less dependant on the public water supplies, they could be managed optimally to the quality of their output instead of quantity. Everyone would benefit.
Now in a disaster zone, a device that could be rapidly deployed to produce sufficient quantities of potable water literally out of thin air would be a life saver in deed.
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