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Desalinizing water is expensive, right? Not with this clay pot

By Laura Shin | September 30, 2012, 3:34 PM PDT

About 70% of the world’s surface is covered by water. But since 97% of it is ocean water, all but a tiny percentage is undrinkable.

While ways to desalinize it exist, they mostly require a lot of energy and money. As Fast Company reports, “power plants and hundreds of millions of dollars are needed to run larger desalination plants.”

But a new clay pot called Eliodomestico could change all that.

Designed by Milan-based freelance industrial designer Gabriele Diamanti, Eliodomestico is a clay pot topped with a black metal basin. Diamanti’s site says that it purifies the water “like an upside down coffee maker.” The sun beats down on the top, causing the water to steam up. As it expands, it is forced down into the only available space — the expansion nozzle, which leads down to a clay bowl design especially for easy transport on top of the head, as water is often carried around the world.

Left behind in the pot are salt and other contaminants.

Amazingly, the cost to build the device (which has an open-source design that anyone can use to build their own) is $50 and it produced five liters of water a day in optimal conditions, whereas existing solar stills cost $100 to produce and make just three liters of water per day.

Not only is it cheaper and more productive, but the solar-powered object also requires no electricity, no filters and a low level of maintenance. Eliodomestico could help change the disheartening statistic that 3.6 million people die each year due to lack of clean water.

Related on SmartPlanet:

via: Fast Company

photos and diagram: Gabriele Diamanti

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About Laura Shin

Laura Shin is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

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It seems harsh

but it's true that when people live on the edge of hunger and thirst, when a technological or other improvement comes along, the population just increases to the point where they're on the edge of famine again. It happened in the Green Revolution of the 1960s in which Western techniques were introduced to 3rd world agriculture, crop yields increased, and people had more children until they became approximately as bad off as they were before. It's only human nature and it will probably always happen this way unless family size limits are enforced somehow, as repugnant as that may seem.

Posted by cashews

1st Oct

Just
In

Expansion into space ...

cashews, Expansion into space would solve what you describe.

Posted by BlazingEagle

9th Oct

Show:

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Awesome

Awesome example of design/thinking around the problem.

Only downside is the real driver to save this planet from mankind is a need for overall population reduction. Hopefully this can be implemented in conjunction with Education, Contraception and basic healthcare - as broadly advocated by the Gates Foundation - to reduce off-spring per family.

Posted by neil.postlethwaite@...

1st Oct

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-2 Votes

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Say that to Muslims

Their imams want them to breed as fast as possible, to take over the earth's population.

Posted by ampman731

1st Oct

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10 Myths About Muslims in the West

Hi ampman731,

You seem to misinformed about Muslim birth rates, historically they are no different than any other youthful immigrant group, perhaps you have been doing something that is harmful to your brain, like perhaps watching FOX news or listening to Rush Limbaugh?

At any rate go to the following link (if you dare) and let some facts add to your world view, see link;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-saunders/10-myths-about-muslims-in_b_1864589.html#slide=1486857

Scientia Non Domus,
(Knowledge has No Home)

Best wishes,

antiguajohn

Posted by antiguajohn

1st Oct

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0 Votes

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this won't help...

this technology has been around for years... ask any Boy Scout that purified urine into drinking water using a solar still built from a bowl, a cup, a rock, and a piece of sheet plastic. (Google Solar Still Plans - Search engines are your friend).

The reason this won't help is that it takes all day to purify 4 ounces of water.

Besides, most people that need to make fresh water don't live by the ocean.

Posted by Cabo Wabo Addict

1st Oct

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Didn't read the article, did we?

"...it produced five liters of water a day in optimal conditions..."

That is almost two gallons. Hardly "four ounces".

Or perhaps it's those new-fangled "liter" things you're having trouble with?

Posted by fairportfan

1st Oct

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Badly engineered device

Real engineers can com up with much better design. Inside the British Museum, a device for making fresh water for plants is displayed and well explained. I plan to commercialize an even better version.

Posted by ampman731

1st Oct

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+3 Votes

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Boiling point?

Water turns to steam at the boiling point 212 degrees F. Not many two hundred degree days. The pressure would blow the lid off. $50? I don't think so. I can buy a water purifier for $30 at REI. Who carries seawater out to the middle of a field? This article does not hold water.

Posted by draw4th

1st Oct

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Ever hear of evaporation?

So you've never seen a puddle evaporate after a rain shower? Or seen the rain evaporate off your car? At any temperature there are molecules of water that move fast enough to enter the gaseous state. Even ice sublimates. It's just a matter of statistics.

In many places of the world, the issue is not availability of water, but the fact that it is briny or polluted. Evaporation would work just as well here.

Posted by zackers

1st Oct

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Read the article.

Thanks for the lesson of evaporation, what's that have to do with this?

Posted by draw4th

1st Oct

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Boiling is not required for this to work.

Water doesn't have to boil in order to evaporate. Otherwise your skin would have to get to 100 C in order for the sweat to evaporate and cool you. All that is required for evaporation to occur is that the relative humidity is less than 100%.

Posted by riverat1

Updated - 2nd Oct

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Bad idea

How about these people stop reproducing if you live in an area where there is no water available to drink. Send them 3.6 million contraceptives. This would solve two problems: Suffering of their offspring and global overpopulation.

Posted by BitwiseCGU

1st Oct

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Contraception is the answer?

I'm troubled by the idea that poor people or those not near drinakble water shouldn't breed. Maybe people with such ignorant idea shouldn't breed?

Posted by t0mmyt@...

1st Oct

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It seems harsh

Posted by cashews

1st Oct

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So-called green revolution

Those Western agricultural techniques gave big yields at first, but they require ever-increasing inputs of agricultural chemicals to maintain those yields. They deplete the organic matter in the soil, making it less able to retain water and nutrients and more prone to compaction. In years with drought or excessive rain, yields can be worse even when plenty of chemical fertilizer is used. The soil also erodes more easily.

Where those methods took hold, after a number of year farmers had worn-out soil and were broke - plus, they had more mouths to feed. There was more to it than you are seeing, the "green revolution" farming methods are simply not sustainable in the third world. Not sustainable here, either, for that matter; the whole system is on the verge of collapse.

Posted by Greenknight_z

2nd Oct

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Education is the answer!

How the hell did this veer off into a bunch of rants on overpopulation? The answer to overpopulation is education. Women who are empowered by education have fewer children.

Posted by riverat1

1st Oct

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Population growth slows ...

1) as the general health of the population increases
2) as infant and maternal mortality decreases
3) as levels of maternal education increase

This device addresses item 1. The other items are different issues.

Posted by mheartwood

1st Oct

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big families

These people have large families to support them in old age when they can no longer work or become sick.
I was told by a white hunter that lived in Africa for many years that sex while very hungry was very good, and there was nothing else to do at night! I hope I never have to with out choice experience this personally.

Posted by ronangel

1st Oct

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RE: 10 Myths About Muslims in the West and where does the brine go?

If you are using the Huffington Post as your source of information then you are just as ideologically tainted as anyone who watches Rush or Fox.

It never ceases to amaze me that the left wing progressive? people (people who expouse pro femminist and pro homosexual agendas) continue to defend Islam and Muslims while Islamists routinely repress and opress women and children, and execute homosexuals.

It is a world fact that the population growth in Islamic countries is outpacing that of the west. It is a tenent of Islam to reproduce at a higher rate to try and spread Islam over the world.

Lastly, Where does one dump the brine solution left over. This must be careully considered since dumping it back into the water supply is very counterproductive.

Posted by randall.wilkinson@...

Updated - 2nd Oct

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Solar stills....can be much cheaper.

You need:
Wet dirt or ground and/or water/urine/seawater/green vegetation.
A way to scoop a hole in the dirt.
A square meter or two of clear plastic.
A container, open topped.
Plastic tubing (optional)
Smallish rock. 200-300gms.

Scoop out hole maybe 30cm smaller in diameter than the plastic sheet.
Bury about half of the sheet's edge along the top of the hole.
dump water containing fluids/vegetation around the center of the hole, leaving room for you container.

Insert end of optional plastic tubing into pot, bring other end outside of the edge of the hole.

Bury the rest of the plastic sheet edging at the edge of the hole (rocks/pebbles/dirt)

Place rock on sheeting and it will move to center. Wait as container fills with water condensed off of the sheet.

Clear plastic sheeting is nearly ubiquitous around the world, make sure that the piece you choose is clean and was not used to wrap toxic materials.

Total cost: $0 + 1/2hr time assuming you have a container (plastic bottles are also ubiquitous around the world, but any clean container will work, so long as you have a large enough opening so the condensate falls into the container.

Posted by wizoddg

4th Oct

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0 Votes

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If a desalination...

plant could be set up right. A company could sell the water and the salt.

Posted by blackjack861@...

7th Oct

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0 Votes

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Expansion into space ...

cashews, Expansion into space would solve what you describe.

Posted by BlazingEagle

9th Oct

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