Game changer - he got it right this time it appears

[macdoc]

He did not do so well with the Segway but this is amazing.....even ocean water....

The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns."
He tested two machines in Bangladesh with the help of Iqbal Quadir, the founder of Grameen Phone, largest cell phone company in Bangladesh. Quadir is very impressed with the machines and soon plans to start manufacturing the machines with licensing from Kamen’s company.
The generator of this machine can be powered by readily available local fuel, cow dung and can produce a kilowatt of electricity. It doesn’t look much but it is doing dual purpose generating electricity as well as filtering water. Even if it powers light bulbs it will help productivity in developing nations.
Kamen will connect the water distiller called Slingshot to this generator and use some of the energy that is wasted by it to purify the water. The Slingshot takes in contaminated water (or raw sewage) and separates out the clean water by vaporization.
Currently the machines costs about $100,000 but with mass production and better design they plan to cut it down to $1,000 to $2,000 per machine.
Some of the main features of this Slingshot are:
1.) It is designed to supply a village with 1,000 liters/day of clean water
2.) You can use any water source, ocean, puddle, chemical waste site, hexavalent chrome, arsenic, poison, 50 gallon drum of urine
3.) The are no filters to replace, no charcoal, no anything disposable (just distillation)
4.) The Slingshot can use half the waste heat (450 watts) from a sterling engine electrical generator (prototype also being designed by Kamen's company) to boil its water
5.) Slingshot will be less then 60 lbs.
6.) The sterling engine, used as an electrical generator, can produce about 200 watts of power (it will never be more then 20% efficient) and 800 watts of waste heat. This waste heat is then used to purify the water.

http://cgull8m.hubpages.com/hub/Segway- ... r-purifier
more coverage
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/ ... t-and-kam/

http://gizmodo.com/370698/colbert-first ... -distiller

http://science.howstuffworks.com/enviro ... rifier.htm

Not that it's gonna help the over population problem

[FBM]

Cool. A few years ago I was doing some informal experimentation with Stirling engines. I know they'll catch on sooner or later.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Don't drink the water!" Children go blind because of a parasite in the water. I hope this helps.

[Calilasseia]

If the device heat-distils the water, it'll kill off any parasites that happen to be living therein.

A small scale electricity generator that runs off cow shit and provides safe drinking water? Nice.

[FBM]

Indeed. And if combustibles are in short supply, solar heat can be used to power the stirling engine. I used to have a small model one that would run off the heat of your hand or cup of coffee. Stirling engines aren't self-starters; somebody needs to be there to give them the initial nudge, but I don't imagine that'd be much of an issue.

[Calilasseia]

An ornery mule could probably kick start a Stirling engine if there's a dearth of reasonably fit people ...

[FBM]

Maybe some overkill there, but...