Meet Desolenator: The gadget that will turn sunshine into drinking water.
Water is probably the most important resource we have in the world – so it is astonishing that not everyone has access to clean water to drink. This is the problem that Desolenator is hoping to solve.
Desolenator is a desalination device that will take the salt and other nasty stuff out of water – and as the pun suggests, it is fully solar powered so doesn’t require a connection the electricity grid – something that isn’t always a given in many parts of the developing world.
After several rounds of prototyping since what the team called the “eureka moment” in 2012 the company has now launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo – the company wants to raise $150,000 (about £95,000) to do some larger scale user testing in South India, and get the final product into good enough shape to ship in October 2015.
Here’s how the device works:
“Desolenator maximises the solar radiation that hits the surface area of the system to boil water to get a yield over 15 litres of water per day. While solar panels typically convert only about 15-18% of the solar radiation that hits them into energy, Desolenator also harvests the heat that would otherwise be lost and directs this to heat the salt/polluted water. The water heats to around 90 degrees, at which point we use the electrical energy from the solar panels to boil the water. We then run the steam through a heat exchange mechanism to heat the next batch of salt/polluted water. We then have two outputs, pure clean drinking water and brine (which can be re-circulated through the system)”.
At the time of writing Desolenator has raised over $32,000 in just a few hours – if you’d like to support it you can head over to the Indiegogo page – you have until 14th January to do so!
Full Disclosure: Desolenator is a client of our parent company, Sutro Digital.
