Airdrop Water Distiller
This picture is first of a pot lid with a hose attached by an adapter. I have detailed the adapter in the upper left corner, and then suggested other inventions numbered below the picture of the pot. These suggest ways that water might be distilled where there is no fuel, by using sunlight and the right contraption. I was very frustrated that people could not understand my artwork here, “like ya gotta be da Vince ‘r somethin.’”This is one of those, “I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you,” and truly one has to care about fresh water and look into the idea, or one will not see it. People do not understand distillation, nor even that fresh water is supposed to come from the sky as eggs do from chickens.
A pot lid and attachable flex-metal hose must be patented and manufactured for airdrops into disaster zones and home emergency prep.
Stove Top Water Distiller for Disaster Zones and Home Emergency Preparedness
A more long term idea is for a stove-top water distiller. In Haiti, after the earthquake, there was all this broken wood, and no fresh water. The same occurred at Katrina, in New Orleans. There is one guy now on the internet who comes close to this design, and another who works with pots, inserting a hose, first of plastic then copper. Copper should not be used, and it is not used for hot but only cold water, if I am not mistaken. It can produce a reaction that makes a poison. Do this: First produce a lid to fit the most standard size cooking pot, but with a one inch wide opening at the top, fitted to receive a metal flexible tube that can be screwed on like a jar lid, much like the metal hose used for some gas cans. The metal must not dissolve in water, so, tin may be best, not copper and certainly not plastic. The tube then runs into a pot or jar to collect the fresh water. Later, the ideal pot might be designed, and a large version, like an alcohol distiller, but for now, a simple lid and hose can be airlifted to disaster zones. In the Philippians, they were waiting for a U. S. Navy ship to come with water distillers. The key to all this, which apparently most people do not understand, is that when water boils at 212 degrees, only water and no impurities go in the tube, where it re-condenses in the cool end of the tube and the receptacle. This is not the same as pasteurization by boiling, and would not work for nuclear contamination. It probably won’t bring fresh water to Africa, or where there is not fuel to boil water. Jimmi Carter uses a filter to clear water of a worm, but then they are drinking the brown water! But in Haiti, I saw them setting plastic bottles of water in the sun to “purify” them. The plastic, of course, seeps into the water, and where possible, glass, like purex, seems best. The impurities must be cleaned out of the pot. Distilled water lacks minerals, so the home water distiller won’t quite replace bottled water, but we ought be able to get pure water without having to drive to the store, even for basic homeland security.
The fellow on the internet at desert sun 02 comes the closest, using a tea pot and a flexible metal tube. The problem of attaching the two can be overcome if the parts are made for each other. But a pot and lid has the advantage of being cleanable, though the teapot could be airlifted, and would work, and better than what is now being done. The pot too might receive the pot lid with a screw on attachment like a jar. I am wondering if the efficiency might be increased with something like a percolator, to collect the hot bubbles on the bottom without sending them through the whole pot of water.
We will have to consider the boiling points of various contaminants like oil or alcohol, which has a boiling point lower than water.
My friend Kirk says to use a funnel upside down, and attach it to the pot with clips or clamps. At the American Preppers website, they show an alcohol type distiller, with something like a funnel attached with clamps.
But it seems that unless these pot lids are manufactured for the purpose, we won’t be able to distill water at home, but if many are made, we will.
Now Lars on the Internet has shown me the invention of Frank Mendez at WaterDistillers.com. This has some brilliant features, especially in its use of the cooling to preheat the water for boiling. One problem will occur if the distillation chamber reaches 212 degrees, and another may be that the distilled water is too close to the fire. But his is the best yet! I still like mine, for its simplicity and hence prospects for disaster zones and mass production. His has advantages like one must only use one stove burner, but it requires three pots, or two and a collector.
Now I am thinking about Africa. With the airdrop package, we might include a large, one foot in diameter, magnifying glass, and perhaps a mirror to double the ray, so that one might boil the water with sunlight. Maybe a spot on the fancy, advanced pot would be made to receive such a ray. One video on the internet shows a magnifying glass made of water suspended on plastic. We will wrap our airdrop model in a piece of plastic or two that are best for evaporation distilling and magnifying.
The Red Cross has seen the pot lid, but they underestimate the spirit of invention. They have so far connected me to WTIC, Water Tech and Innovation, and maybe someone there can see.
As noted on my blog, Dean Kamen and Company have invented a water box that can produce 250 gallons, though it requires electricity. I want now to make a solar steam engine to provide them electricity where this is not otherwise possible.
Low tech is being ignored, and there are many things now possible by combining products that are new to our world, like plastic. Who would have thought that water could be used to make a magnifying glass, and this used to power a solar stove burner? How hard is it to distill water without a product manufactured for the purpose?
Would this not make cooking possible in places where wood is scarce, and cooking is done with dung? At least while the sun is high, a hotplate might be designed which receives the sun spot from the glass and spreads it out enough to cook. Large magnifying glasses might be made on site, where there is sand, and placed on stands to follow the sun.
I realized this invention because I still have no way to distill water at home. I remain convinced that water distillers can be hooked up to furnaces and wood stoves. Clean water was never such an issue, and if it was, these things would have already been invented. In the winter, the energy cost of distilling water is zero, because one heats the home in any case. But a five gallon reservoir on ones heater, that stays constantly full, is a very simple idea. And why can air conditioners not be made of stainless steel condensers, and distill water by the way, since cooling is done by removing water from the air?
Here is a question for all my doubters: When water boils in a pot, where do the bubbles come from? It took me a while to figure it out, and I knew the answer!
Another water idea comes from the survivalist method of suspending a plastic tarp a few inches above the ground, with a small hole and weight in the center, and a glass under the hole to collect fresh water. Desertsuno2 has a beautiful “solar water distiller” based on this principle. What if this was done en-masse, over the ocean, where only the water and none of the salt is evaporating? So, dig a trench to a pond of seawater with an island and a barrel in the middle to collect the fresh water that rolls off your huge plastic tarp! A small hole just off center will collect rainwater into the same barrel. This is amazing, and survivalists get water in the desert this way.
A question for Chemists: Evaporation is different from boiling. Is liquid water not dissolved in the air, while in boiling, the liquid changes from into gas? So salt is cleansed in evaporation not because it does not become a gas, but because salt does not dissolve into air as water does.
mmcdonald77 