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Solar Water Distillation

By Ben Mester

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 25Sep2010
Word count: 529
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It's a strange thing how damaging water can be. Ordinarily, in many countries, drought and dryness forces many to drink unclean water, killing many. But now, with the disastrous flooding going on in Pakistan, we have seen firsthand that too much water is equally a killer as drought and dryness. Too much stagnant water breeds disease and malaria. Water is the biggest issue facing humanity today. Did you know that a lack of clean water is the biggest killer of humans on the planet? So what are we to do about this problem. I think that solar water distiller technology is the answer. Though many experts scoff at solar water distillation because it isn't guaranteed to produce fully clean water, it's still the best thing we've got.

What is a solar water distiller? A solar water distiller is basically a triangular box with a glass pane enclosing the top. When this box is filled with dirty water and put out into the sun, the glass causes a greenhouse effect and the water heats up and begins to evaporate very quickly. Then as it collects on the glass pane, it begins to slide down the pane until it's collected and transported to a jug for drinking.

Opponents to this kind of technology say that the water that comes out of the solar water distiller isn't ever really cleaned and therefore isn't viable for human use. But just consider the alternative. If all the humans have to drink prior to this is the dirty water, then surely running that same dirty water through a solar water distiller can't hurt. There are many expensive water filtration systems out there, and many of them have filters that need to be changed often.

The solar water distiller isn't the same. It's very easy to construct, mostly just wood and a pane of glass, and it doesn't use any filter at all, just natural evaporation. Nature cleans the water itself. It doesn't need any fancy devices. When I lived in southeast Asia for a year, in Cambodia, I often would buy green coconuts for the juice they had inside. The water in Cambodia wasn't often very clean but inside the green coconut lay about a pint of fresh, nutrient rich water that nature had cleaned on its own and locked away inside the coconut. Over in Cambodia, buying an unripe coconut cost about five cents at the time. A clean bottle of water was twenty five cents. So you decide which is more economical for poor countries.

Man made filtration is excellent. It's only downfall is its cost. Solar water distillers are an inexpensive way to provide a marginal amount of filtration to drinking water. Especially for times of disaster and catastrophe like the current flooding in Pakistan, solar water distillers ought to be built and used so that people can still have access to clean water. And even though solar water distillers can be used for personal use, they can also be constructed on a grand scale, many many feet wide and long, for mass purification of water. I hope in the future, they'll be given a second look by governments and aid organization.

I hope you enjoyed this perspective on solar water distillers. For more on water filtration, check out this other article on activated charcoal.

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