Distillers

Originally posted 8.25.17, updated on,
9.13.17 :

Now there are six bottles that are collecting water while disposing of waste water.  This may seem to be a lot, but even with the improvements, it is only a few ounces per day.

So, let's not get carried away.  I felt rather pleased to have it work this well.  Lots of times, an idea just doesn't work at all.  This one doesn't work as well as I would like, but it at least it accomplishes something.


9.12.17:

19:12 :

Good news to report.  The experiment seems to be working.  The evaporation rate did go up, and there is more water collecting in the bottles.

The bottle I prepared does seem to trap more water.  I will make the bottles like this for now on.  If I have enough of these bottles, a significant amount of water ( by my standards ) will be within reach.

I am hoping to use no more than five gallons daily, and be able to reclaim half of that.  That will make a net use of 2.5 gallons per day.

00:30 :

One more experiment on tap for tomorrow.   Took a plastic lid, as mentioned, and put it in as a separator inside the bigger soda bottle.  The idea is to trap the water vapor in the upper chamber, and still allow water to drip into the lower chamber.  Hopefully, this will improve efficiency, and more water can be cleaned up.

Secondly, I added aluminum foil inside the washtub, which is where the soda bottles were placed.  The idea is to trap more of the sun's rays, which hopefully will increase the evaporation rate.

Despite the attempts at improvements, the results are still disappointing.  The water isn't collecting very fast at all.

Two of the bottles are doing better than the others.  It gave me the ideas that I have mentioned in this post.  The best results have come from the bottles with the least amount of volume in which the water vapor comes out of the waste water.  The theory is that it saturates the space better than the lower chamber and will condense, drip into the lower chamber, thus separating out by gravity.


9.11.17:

Continuing my experiments with the soda bottles and cans of waste water.  It may be better to use some type of lid over the waste water so that the evaporated and condensed water will not go back into the waste water, nor will the recently condensed water.  If the condensed water goes back into the waste water, it will defeat the whole purpose.

So far this experiment is not going like I wanted it to.  It is not producing much water.



the original post follows:

This won't go into the off-grid series of posts.  Too repetitive.



after trying the first method in videos below:

Update:

I put something together this morning which looks a lot like the first video below.  However, for most of the day now, nothing is condensing in the bottle.  I don't know what's wrong.  Maybe the conditions are wrong, or something else I cannot put my finger on.


resume post...


Two videos I want to post.

This first one is a repost of something that I may want to consider as an experiment.  Mostly because of its simplicity and low cost.

You would use the smaller container inside of the larger plastic container.  The reason this works is that the evaporated water condenses inside the big bottle, but collects at the bottom, which has been folded up.  The folds will collect small amounts of water.  A device like this would be useful to clean up small amounts of water.  It so happens that I may be able to use such a device.






The second idea may be usable as well.  You can distill small amounts of water with a device such as this.

I have already made such a device, but as of the present, it cannot be matched up with a combustion stove.  I need to make some sort of alteration in order to make that work.  Also, my device does not use a bucket of water to cool the copper tubing.   Something to consider.