[long note]
- [Kenny Stevens] These are two solar distillation units.
They are very low-tech but
very effective ways of taking
undesirable water; it's
dirty, it's too salty
it's got bacteria
it's got minerals you don't want.
You can take that undesirable water
place it inside the still
and through the process
of being heated by the sun
evaporating and then condensing
on the surface of the glass
or in this case, plexiglass
and then glass there
and drips down into a trough
and flows into the jar.
It's kinda like
what happens with rain water.
The sun heats the ocean, heats
the lake, heats the river
the water evaporates up
it condenses into clouds
and when the clouds get to
a certain size it rains.
And that's the same thing
here, you can see it
where the water's evaporating up
the little water droplets
are kinda like the clouds
and when you got a water
droplet of a certain size
it will drip down and start
the whole process going.
We decided to do some
research on these because of
the needs of some communities
in Southern New Mexico,
in Mexico, internationally
where they have water perhaps
but it's impure for whatever reason.
Again, dirty, bacteria, salty,
and we wanted to make these such that
they could be constructed
in just about any place.
Both of these are made
out of simple materials.
That one's made out of an old toolbox.
This is made out of polycarbonate
which is available in every
continent on the planet.
And this one's got a polycarbonate front
which is unbreakable.
That has a glass front which
is a little more efficient
but you could break it.
The idea is they could take this
and if they're in a situation
where they have water
whether it's at their home
or if it's in a disaster situation
like in Haiti, or in New Orleans, or in Pakistan,
where people were dying of thirst.
Even though, there was water everywhere.
Of course, they couldn't drink the water
'cause it was undesirable.
But with a small unit like this,
somebody in a disaster
situation could provide enough
drinking water to serve their needs.
We've figured that for a family of four,
each person consumes about a gallon a day in drinking and cooking water.
That for a family of four,
two square meters would be about enough.
20 square feet in the American units
So something six by three, seven by three,
you could provide enough
water for a family of four.
Of course, in the summer with greater solar energy you get a little more water.
But again, with that two square meters,
you could make about four gallons a day
which would be enough
for the family of four.
Here in New Mexico, down in Columbus,
they have ground water not too deep,
but the ground water has lots of uranium and lots of fluoride in it.
A family could put this,
take the water that comes out of the tap.
You could shower with it and
wash with it.
But for drinking, you'd take four gallons,
put it into the solar still,
and create pure water that
you could easily drink.
It comes out about 99.9 percent pure.
So, you can basically take as junky a water as you can get
and make incredibly pure
water out the other end.
- [Announcer] The
preceding was a production
of New Mexico State University.
The views and opinions in this program
are those of the author
and do not necessarily
represent the views and opinions
of the NMSU Board of Regents.
