Watercone Solar Fresh Water
Watercone Solar Fresh Water
Find out about the Watercone - a sun powered device for extracting fresh water from salt water
water | solar
The
Watercone is a simple solution to the age-old problem of obtaining clean fresh drinking water from salty sea water.
As the schematic above shows, the
Watercone is a clear plastic cone which is placed over a shallow dish filled with salty water (or even directly over damp ground). Over the course of the day, the energy from the sun helps fresh water to
evaporate upwards where it condenses on the inside surface of the Watercone. The Watercone is a type of
solar still.
That water trickles down and pools in the rim of the cone. At the end of the day, the clean
fresh water collected in the Watercone can be tipped out and collected for use.
Watercone
The manufacturers of
Watercone claim that over 1 litre per day of clean drinking water can be obtained, with an absolute maximum of 1.6 litres. It is made of
Makrolon - a polycarbonate which is fully biodegradeable, not sensitive to UV light, and ultra-rugged. The expected useful life of a Watercone
is around
five years and they will cost around 20 Euro.
Watercone has been designed for use in the fifty or more
developing countries worldwide with populations living close to the coast but with no access to clean drinking water. A litre of
bottled water costs on average $0.50 in the developing world, so a Watercone can pay for itself in just a couple of months.
More Information about Watercone
The official
Watercone website contains a lot of information about the Watercone together with photographs and schematic drawings.
Article Last Modified: 08:33, 14th Aug 2007Comment on this Article
If you have any comments on this article, please email them to
neil@reuk.co.uk.
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