Introduction: Homemade Water Desalinator

One of the technologies that has been presented as an alternative for the treatment of water for human consumption is desalination, using as an energy source solar radiation, given the abundance of salt water in seas and oceans and the existence of many places with shortage of drinking water, which are close to seas and oceans and receive good levels of solar radiation.
In this project we propose the construction of a system that takes advantage of the principles on which the phenomenon of natural evaporation of liquids is based, using solar radiation as an energy source. A great advantage of this system is that it uses a free energy source and could also scale to larger dimensions to obtain large amounts of fresh water.

Step 1: Materials and Tools

Materials:

  • Seawater
  • Aluminum foil
  • A cardboard box
  • Two plastic containers
  • Glass sheet
  • Tape
  • A pvc tube
  • A box of eggs
  • Thin cardboard
  • Black Tempera

Tools:

  • Cutter
  • Scissors
  • Uhu
  • Measuring tape
  • Clothes hooks

Step 2: Creation of the System

    1. First cut a cardboard box in half diagonally using the cutter.
    2. Then stick with Uhu the aluminum foil on all the internal walls of the box and let it dry.
    3. Then cover the thin cardboard with aluminum foil.
    4. Stick the thin cardboard on top of the box and place the clothespins so that it stays stuck.
    5. Cut the egg box to obtain a downward slope.
    6. Cut a PVC tube in half to use it as a channel.
    7. Paint one of the containers of black with tempera.
    8. Make a circular cut to the transparent container to facilitate the entrance of the gutter.
    9. Glue the glass sheet to the end of the thin cardboard located in the upper part of the box and allow to dry with two clothes hooks placed on top.
    10. Finally place the egg box as the base of the prototype, and place the gutter next to one side of the glass sheet and at the mouth the other transparent container.

    Step 3: Obtaining Desalinated Water

    1. Fill the black container with seawater and place it inside the box.
    2. Then place the desalinator in a sunny place.
    3. With the passing of the hours on one or several sunny days, depending on the amount of sun in the day, the seawater will evaporate and condense, sliding the drops of fresh water down the glass sheet and falling into the gutter to be deposited in the transparent container.