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Post by Peter on Feb 19, 2016 23:33:18 GMT 10
You may have read my previous post on how one should never, ever drink water from a swimming pool at ausprepforum.proboards.com/thread/1913/pool-water-post-crunch-scenarion That said, an evening of drinking has led me to consider a swimming-pool-sized distillation device. Yes, you read that right. Think about it... A solar still is basically a plastic or glass membrane over some water; evaporated, pure water hits the underside of the membrane and slides down to a catchment vessel. Let's say frame was built over a pool (I'm thinking a simple frame - tent poles? Steel members?) with some form of membrane over it (builders' plastic? Polycarbonate sheeting?) leading into a water trap (drainage guttering leading to a tank). Could this work? An average pool from the 80's held around 40-50kL. An average pool today holds around 15-20kL. This is a considerable volume for anyone, especially suburban dwellers. This could, of course, be refilled by suitable diversion of roof rainwater catchment. As I'm stuck in the suburbs for the foreseeable future, this is of great interest to me. I hope to have opportunity to test this. I welcome any comments and criticism. |
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Post by graynomad on Feb 21, 2016 10:00:35 GMT 10
I wonder if the idea will scale up, not all things do.
For example such a large membrane would collect a lot of water over its surface, too much and the drops may combine to the point where they will drop off and you may find that a lot of the collected water just goes back into the pool.
This may mean that the angle on the plastic has to be pretty steep and that in turn would mean the structure starts getting very high. Maybe it would need multiple sub-stills all collecting from say 1/4 or 1/6th of the total area, this would keep the overall height down (like a Fesnel lens, well sort of).
Certainly something to research and even try out before it's required I think.
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Post by thereth on Feb 21, 2016 13:26:21 GMT 10
The solar cell idea will work, they already sell them commercially as Carocell (http://www.fcubed.com.au/aspx/carocell-panels.aspx) and I managed to buy one with a tiny rip for $50, they work quite well, but onviously require a sunny / warm day. For me aside from the obvious no power consumption and pure water for nothing the biggest beneit is you can layer them in tiers. So for Tier 1 you have say 10 panels, the 'leftover' then goes through tier 2 which consists of say 6 panels, than again @ 4, 2, 1 whatever. It means you can get as much of the potable water as you can with minimal wastage.
Reverse Osmosis plants for example are around the 18% recovery mark if i remember correctly, so that means for every 100,000L you process, you only get 18,000L of clean water, the rest will need to be reprocessed or disposed of, the reprocessing procedure increasing the overall TDS (total dissolved solids) of your water and lowering the lifespan for your filters therefore costing you more and being far more inefficient in a PSHTF scenario.
I am keen to look at building these myself as Mr Pete has mentioned and get not pay the $400 per panel it was last time i checked (each panel is capable of doing 50L per day). The way they had theirs set up was similar to Mr Petes design, however they had a carpet style material for soaking the original water and as it evaporated it went to one catcher that drained away. The waster was pushed down the 'carpet' by the trickle feed at the top and pushed into another channel, this also drained away. The matterial was very cheap aluminimium...... which is why I dont have it anymore, if you do make these, secure them well..... mine ended up doing a Dorothy and I never saw it again after a good storm.
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Post by Peter on Feb 21, 2016 13:57:03 GMT 10
For these smaller panels - not the swimming pool sized unit - would a salvaged solahart do the trick? This could probably be claimed from a demolition site or bought from a salvage yard fairly cheaply, I would expect.
I'd also need to look at one in detail to see what modifications would be required.
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Post by thereth on Feb 21, 2016 18:49:59 GMT 10
TBH I dont think it would be that hard to make, now that I have a bit of space I will be looking at making some myself, the main thing is what to use for the absorbant matting, I dont think I could use carpet, but I am sure I will think of something
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myrrph
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Post by myrrph on Feb 23, 2016 13:11:02 GMT 10
You may have read my previous post on how one should never, ever drink water from a swimming pool at ausprepforum.proboards.com/thread/1913/pool-water-post-crunch-scenarion That said, an evening of drinking has led me to consider a swimming-pool-sized distillation device. Yes, you read that right. Think about it... A solar still is basically a plastic or glass membrane over some water; evaporated, pure water hits the underside of the membrane and slides down to a catchment vessel. Let's say frame was built over a pool (I'm thinking a simple frame - tent poles? Steel members?) with some form of membrane over it (builders' plastic? Polycarbonate sheeting?) leading into a water trap (drainage guttering leading to a tank). Could this work? An average pool from the 80's held around 40-50kL. An average pool today holds around 15-20kL. This is a considerable volume for anyone, especially suburban dwellers. This could, of course, be refilled by suitable diversion of roof rainwater catchment. As I'm stuck in the suburbs for the foreseeable future, this is of great interest to me. I hope to have opportunity to test this. I welcome any comments and criticism. This was my idea for dealing with grey water. After showering, the water with detergent could be recycled by a solar still. A humongous solar still. Reckon it'll work? |
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Post by Peter on Feb 23, 2016 16:43:19 GMT 10
I've made some sketches, and it will be many times easier to make several small solar stills than making one huge one. I see no reason why it wouldn't work with grey water.
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myrrph
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Post by myrrph on Feb 23, 2016 17:30:31 GMT 10
share share!!!
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