Water Purifier in the News

Distillation under vacuum is more than likely, but 500 watts isn't much energy to pull vacuum but may be enough to flash the supply.

phoenix911

Guest,

They may be using the same technology which was marketed over 20 years ago by a (now-defunct) company in California, "Super Still Technology". When I visited them, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement, but I believe that it no longer applies. They did the job with very little energy input, by operating in a sealed system and a partial vacuum. The energy input was a blower to cause the vapor on the condensing side to be at a slightly greater pressure than vapor on the evaporating side. Then the condenser becomes the heat source for the boiler. Their units were sold to cruise ships and similar users.

Remember that "watts" is a measurement of rate of energy usage and not total energy used. In your post you don't give the time over which the 500 watts of input power are working to process the 10 gallons (39 liters) of water. In the method described above, the rotary energy from the sterling engine would power the blower; with higher speed (energy input) the process would be faster.

--JMM

Sorry,

The article indicated 10 gal/hr of water purified with 500 watts

If 1 watt = 3.41 BTU/hr, then 500 watts = 1705 BTU/hr

10 gal/hr ==> 83.3 lbs/hr must be evaporated requiring an energy input of ~83,300 BTU/hr. Unless the energy quoted is to run a vacuum system for evaporation with the heat provided by lowering the vapor pressure, I dont see how it could work. I agree with poster commentor #1