Solar Water Purification

Much has been made of solar technology in the press in recent years as the world begins to realize that we can not continue to abuse the world in the way we've been. Although we tend to think of solar energy is used to generate electricity for our homes, in reality there are other uses that you might not have heard of before. You can use graphene solar energy storage or another use is for treating water.

The problem is that the water around the world often is not as pure as we are used in Western countries. People who drink dirty water could end up with all sorts of medical conditions such as typhoid and diarrhea. Even in developed countries may have problems with water. There are small devices that can easily be constructed to help with these problems.

Solar Disinfection (SODIS) is very similar to the method of pasteurization of milk. The microorganisms found in water that give us health problems, can not survive temperatures that are too high. Therefore, this is an ideal method of death, either germs or inactivation of the same.

You might think that creating a solar water treatment system is very difficult to create, however, is much simpler than you might have imagined. All you need is to put water in a plastic bottle of water with a black background so that sunlight is absorbed. On sunny days you can take a couple of hours so that water is purified. This knowledge can come in handy if you need drinking water, while hiking in the countryside.

However it is important that you know you should not use any type of plastic bottle. It must be the type of PET instead of PVC. This is simply because they block the sun's ultraviolet light over PET plastic, which reduces efficiency.

If you need to try something more than a bottle or two of water then we can build a larger version for only a few hundred dollars. What we need to build a container that is rectangular in shape and is only a few inches deep, there will be parts of glass along with a siphon hose.

Basically when the water is heated by sunlight water evaporates and condenses on the glass. The siphon hose is used to extract a portion of this water and you will see that will contain far less bacteria and chemicals such as chlorine.