Energy

This One is more for collecting water than getting energy, but it's solar so I put it with the Energy section.


This Easy To Build Contraption Can Give Water To Everyone: DIY Plans



Solar technology goes much further than creating electricity, some people have learned to use the sun to perform impressive feats such as cooking. On Earth, the sun packs a wallop of heat energy through many different forms of radiation, and innovative ways to use this energy have been developed since the dawn of man. In this article we will show you how to build a solar still and even desalinate water with simple materials and the power of the sun!

There are many ways to build solar stills, these technologies usually evaporate water in one container to produce potable distilled water in another container. A common solar still design employs at least one clear pane of a material like glass which fits onto, or over, a container built to hold water.

As demonstrated in the image below, sunlight passed through a clear material has enough energy to evaporate water which then collects on the glass, condenses, and drips down the pane into an empty container.



Although this design is simple to build and use, some people are not quite satisfied with this it as they may need their water sooner and in larger amounts. To distill larger amounts of water with the sun a person needs more energy; more sunlight. An amazing way to amplify the power of the sun is to use mirrors to reflect far more surface area of sun onto a smaller area. We’re not going to use just any old mirror though, let’s use a DIY parabolic mirror!

At first it’s pretty easy to be skeptical about the effectiveness of this concept, until you know that some of these DIY parabolic mirrors reach over 300 degrees fahrenheit, 88°F over water’s boiling point! Some of these designs, as in the picture below, use a simple mylar reflective sheet as a mirror and still perform very well without being complicated or expensive to build. Unsurprisingly, there seems to be a wealth of information on the web which illustrate, in depth, the mechanics of how parabolic mirrors work and the best materials from which to use in your build.

Now here is where things begin to take a really interesting turn from simply being an amazing technology to truly having a massive impact on global concerns; these same techniques mentioned above can all be used to desalinate water! That’s right, something which teams of energy and water companies struggle with, having to build large scale industrial equipment which use up far more energy than the produced water will ever provide, can be made obsolete with solar stills.

An open source world is paving the way for new technologies to leap forward. A user of the website Instructables.com has even given the world plans for a multipurpose solar desalination plant free of charge! Luckily there are people capable of building these stills for entire communities of people who have also discovered this technology and are building them on very large scales.

Within about five years, WaterFX company co-founder Aaron Mandell hopes to be processing 10 times that amount throughout the San Joaquin Valley. And here’s the part that gets the farmers who buy his water most excited: his solar desalination plant produces water that costs about a quarter of what more conventionally desalinated water costs: $450 an acre-foot versus $2,000 an acre-foot.

WaterFX on SFGate

How does it work? Unlike conventional desalination, which uses a high-pressure reverse osmosis system that forces salt and other solids through a membrane, WaterFX cleans water through use of a 400-kilowatt solar “trough” – hence the mirrors. This concentrated solar still collects the sun’s energy, which heats a pipe containing natural oil, providing heat for the subsequent distillation process.

WaterFX on The Guardian

A last warning is that the distilled water is without minerals, and has to be compensated for in your diet (since it is hypotonic to your cells). It is not advisable to drink just distilled water unless you are otherwise obtaining more than enough minerals in your diet.

Read more: www.exposingtruth.com/diysolarwater/#ixzz3YLviXvMl
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