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Passive Solar Distilled Water
by Jeanette Cain
One property of water is evaporation: water's change from the physical state of a liquid to a gas. Any body type of water, i.e., puddles, ponds, streams, etc., lose some of the surface materials as gas, but leaves any material other than water (H2O). Once trapped and condensed, which is a returning to the liquid state, the water is considered distilled. Mother Earth accomplishes this naturally, but you need to do a little more work: build a passive solar distiller device. This device will turn dirty water into pure water without the use of fossil fuels. Can you improve the process or use a lens to make the process faster? Hypothesis: Can we make pure water by using the sun's energy to evaporate the unclean water?
MATERIALS NEEDED:
1. 3/8" x 6" wooden dowel, but you may substitute the dowel with a long pencil.
2. 2-two-liter soda bottles.
3. 2-three-liter soda bottles.
4. 3 straws
5. 1 square foot of plastic food wrap
6. Scissors
7. Soft drink, saltwater, or seawater
8. Liquid measuring cups, either ounces or milliliters.
9. Brass paper fasteners
10. Masking tape
Take a 2-liter plastic bottle and cut in half, BUT as you cut, carve out a hook shape on opposite sides for the bottle to be hung from a wooden dowel (or pencil). You will need to cut the top off the 3-liter bottle and then punch 2 holes on opposite sides, but near the top of the 3-liter.
Use unclean water, which is one of the three mention in 7 above, to place in the 2-liter container that is INSIDE the 3-liter bottle. The wooden dowel goes through the 2 holes in the 3-liter bottle from which the 2-liter bottle will hang (the reason for the hooks you carved into the 2-liter bottle). Place the 2-liter piece so it will hang from the dowel and be suspended above the 3-liter bottle's floor.
Make a tent-like top to fit over the 3-liter bottle using the straws, masking tape, and the square of plastic food wrap. The plastic will need to extend down into the 3-liter bottle and it will be held in place by the brass paper fasteners. This tent acts as a hood for trapping evaporating water vapor. The idea is for the water vapor to condense inside of it before dripping down the sides and collecting on the floor of the 3-liter bottle.
The solar distiller you have just made needs to be placed in a sunny location, but at the same time the tent-like hood needs to be out of the sun. Condensation of water will be better when the tent top is kept cool. Was the hypothesis correct? Why not measure the amount of time it takes to distill a certain amount of water? Repeat this experiment with the same amount of sunlight and temperature, but place a Fresnel lens in the sunlight's path so the rays fall on the unclean water in the 2-liter bottle. Compare the times between these experiments to see if adding the lens helped, hurt, or made no difference.
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