How to Make Desalination
Desalination is a process that remove minerals (usually salt) from water or earth, used mostly to make seawater safe for drinking or irrigation. High-volume processes use specialized equipment for pressurized evaporative distillation and reverse osmosis filtering. This article gives you a low-cost way using solar energy to desalinate small quantities of seawater. You can increase the scale to produce larger amounts of distilled water or add features to make the system more self-sustaining.
- Difficulty:
- Moderate
Instructions
Things You'll Need
- Black metal or plastic pan 6 inches in diameter with 3-inch high walls
- Metal or plastic white pan 8 inches in diameter with 3-inch high walls
- Glass or clear plastic domed lid fitting the 8-inch diameter pan
- Soap and clean water
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How to make a simple desalination model
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1
Wash or sanitize the lid and both pans, rinsing thoroughly.
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2
Place the black pan in the white pan on a flat surface outside that gets a lot of (preferably all-day) sunlight exposure.
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3
Pour seawater into the black pan, ensuring none spills into the outer pan or overflows the inner pan.
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4
Cover the outer pan with the clear, tight-fitting lid.
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5
As the seawater heats and evaporates, the pure water vapor will condense on the lid and drip along the sides to pool as distilled water in the outer pan. Remove the lid and inner pan, and pour the distilled water from the outer pan into a clean container.
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1
Tips & Warnings
A more self-sustaining system can be made with source water (seawater or other water to be purified) fed through a hose or pipe into the center pan in a slow drip set to replenish the pan without overfilling it. Run a second hose from the outer pan to a collection container to prevent the outer pan from overfilling. This system can be scaled up by using larger pans and/or multiple desalination sets.
To keep the distilled water product pure, be sure to clean the pans before each use. To keep the distilled water product pure, be certain the source water does not spill, splash or overfill the center pan and get into the distilled product.
