First Vid of Dean Kamen's Miracle Water Distiller...on Colbert | Hacker News Reader

First Vid of Dean Kamen's Miracle Water Distiller...on Colbert

gizmodo.com

23 pointspaulsb17 comments

Looks expensive and complicated. I still think a clear plastic gizmo that just uses the sun to distill that merely cleans most toxins, especially biological is better than some giant refrigerator sized, patent encumbered, machine that needs to be plugged in that cleans all toxins.

The little plastic thing could be made so small, so light, and so cheap that they could just be dumped out of the back of airplanes where they are needed.

How do we teach the villagers how to use them? Call them on their cell phones. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/03/africa/AF-FEA-GEN-...

Relevant patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...

Kamen talked at TED about why he invented the Segway. Towards the end of the talk, he talks about his water distiller as well. The distiller was apparently an afterthought on the road to providing the Segway with a portable power generator.

Here's the talk http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/9

What's even cooler is his house. It's on an island off New Hampshire, which he claims is it's own nation, separated from the United States (he made a peace treaty with Bush Sr!) It is a huge mansion in the shape of a hexagon, with loads of secret passages and stuff. The first thing you see when you enter is a huge stirling engine (working). It has its own army (the local police force uses his baseball fields), and currency, which is measured in increments of pi. His company (DEKA) builds him intricate presents each year, two years ago they made him a chess player (mechanical)... (added this stuff the the wiki [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen#Personal_life] a while ago).

He also founded FIRST, a robotics competition for high schoolers. I recommend anyone with mechanical experience (includes C programming) to find a local team and join in. They are always looking for adult mentors; www.firstwiki.net

The only difference between this water distiller and just boiling water is the amount of electricity required.

Right now all three presidential candidates are favor of a cap-and-trade system. There is something like a 90% chance of having that enacted within the next 18-24 months. According to John Doerr, once we get a cap-and-trade system solar will become cost competitive with coal within two years.

So while this specific device is certainly cool, the upcoming trillion dollar energy revolution is going to have a far greater impact on the ability for developing nations to have clean water than any single device.

Are you sure? Do you know how this machine works? There is significantly more to distillation than just boiling. Conventional boiling only deals with microbes, chemicals, such as salt, require full distillation, so if this really is a genuine distillation machine, it is significantly more useful than boiling water (which requires a lot of energy to do on a mass scale.)

The video mentions that it removes salt, arsenic, and heavy metals. I don't see boiling helping there either.

If you boil salt water the steam won't have salt in it, will it?

That, by definition, is distillation. It is remarkably difficult to do properly.

I think they could be used together. If the technology is applicable and useful, just because there are other avenues opening up doesn't mean we should discount this one simply because the -potential- for something greater is there.

A few more details: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/28/...

That article was dated from 2003. There is also a Time article about the device from around the same period.

Near as I can tell, he's still working on it.

> 10 gallons of water an hour on 500 watts of electricity.

Maybe this has changed, but it's perhaps silly to talk about bringing clean water to a lot of dirt poor communities with this kind of energy requirement. People barely have enough fuel to cook with. They can't feed a generator and they can't order parts for it either.

I think the generator uses a Stirling engine. It's been designed to require little maintenance, so the need for parts is vastly reduced. Additionally, Kamen stated that you could power it using a variety of fuels. If indeed it is a Stirling engine, then a variation could even be adapted that merely used a large parabolic reflector to generate the necessary heat to power the generator, without any other fuel requirement.

I also think it's easy for us in developed countries to underestimate the amount of effort required to bring potable water to individuals in undeveloped areas. I've been working to help send an acquaintance back to Uganda to do work on water systems there -- analyzing the water, as well as clearing the simple spring wells and teaching the locals that it's better to get water from the pipe than from the pool on the ground. In his presentation, he noted that it's not unusual for many villagers to make a four-hour hike to a water source, and then carry that water back again.

I would think that a trip like that would consume rather more than 500 watts of power.

This device deserves the hype the Segway received.

If it works.

Is it just me or did I see a filter in the lower left corner of the box?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com