Water Purifier

How much water do you want, and how much time are you willing to wait to get that water?

This system should provide 200 liters a day. May be I have a large tank to fill with "contaminated or not safe water" . Will have another tank to store purified water. Let us consider we fill unsafe water 2 hours before we need clean water.

Does this make any sense? Any comments welcome.

The Lifesaver filter is based on hand pumping the water through a filter. So I would guess it depends on how much pressure you can generate by pumping by hand. Lets say 50 psi or so. The Lifesaver is a carbon block and ultra filter system. The smaller models are usually good for 3000 L. As it is nano filtration it will not filter salts. However it should filter most bacteria and viruses. Thus rendering some very poor quality water potable. It has some competitors like Katadyn and should be good for a lot of travelers. I would use one but as I am a pure water freak I would likely add some iodine with an eye dropper to each Liter treated and let it stand for 20 minutes.

Good luck with your design. There is a demand for these type of systems for travelers everywhere and is a real "lifesaver" in many situations. They tend to be expensive but if you can come up with a cheap model...kudos. Think of iodine as a backup system.

Hi,

Thank you very much for your reply. I am planning to design a portable water purifier using solar energy. This could help people living in remote areas with clean drinking water (availability of water nearby is another "?")

I am student in solar energy and I want to do this as community service project.

I thought of designing a system with "activated carbon", "UV" and "RO" as final stage of purification.

Raam: That is a very good and admirable idea. Solar energy almost always good in those areas where power is not available. So if I understand, your plan is to use a system such as nano filtration/ACarbon as a preliminary step before storage and then use some sort of post disinfection like UV as the water is extracted from the storage tank.

I would only use R/O if you must remove a small amount on mineral salts; otherwise, stick to nano-filtration. Unfortunately, it will take more power to operate your pump than anything else. But you could use a small reverse osmosis pump (they are available in DC power) with low output like 0.5L/min and that should fill the reservoir in a reasonable speed. An RO pump may provide some added capacity using nano-filtration. I am not sure if Ultraviolet systems are available in DC power but check companies like Trojan UV ( I know they are available in low watt output but you will need their expertise to assure you maintain the correct UV features). Otherwise, I guess an inverted will adjust the solar power if needed. It sounds like a small solar unit of 300 watts or so would be more than adequate. Googling will likely find the components you need. The rest is really on site construction and may vary.

The availability of water is sometimes an issue for those in arid and remote areas in many countries. That can bring up a whole new topic or even could be expanded in this thread.

Do a search on hollow fiber membranes, especially multibore membranes.

Also lifefilta.com

Thank you. Will search for it and keep you updated.

I suppose you know about these people who fairly well get the 'high-tech' result out of a low-tech method.

Thank you very much. I went through the link you posted. very interesting and informative. Will surely consider this one too.

That, my friend, is a great addition to this discussion. It sounds like the OP is looking for a school project solution, but I like your suggestion. Well done, and GA.

An intriguing process... simple, effective, constructable, universal...

Oddly enough it's something that was posted by somebody on Haitian In a Can during the 'bloodbath' on water purity - so Garthh or Warner? are probably deserving, more so than me.

All I did is remember what other CR4 folks have taught me.

As long as the wealth is spread and the knowledge shared, it's all good.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=solar-powered+water+evaporators&src=IE-SearchBox&Form=IE8SRC