Ultra-Pure Distilled Water Inspired by the Evaporation Process — Innovation

Innovation: Industry

Ultra‑Pure Distilled Water Inspired by the Evaporation Process

SolAqua

Image: Aaron Burden / Unsplash / CC BY SA ‑ Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Capture, Absorb, or Filter Liquids

The most common liquid used by living systems is water, which they require to survive. But there are many other liquids that provide nourishment, play a role in defense mechanisms, or serve other purposes. Water varies in its availability; it is sometimes plentiful and sometimes very scarce or only available as fog or mist. To minimize the energy required to capture, absorb, or filter liquids, living systems have strategies that take advantage of the unique properties of the given liquid. For example, water moves from a gaseous to liquid state when it encounters a surface colder than the air. Plants in forests that experience fog and clouds more than rain have strategies that condense liquid water from moist air.

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Capture, Absorb, or Filter Energy

Many forms of energy are naturally available, including kinetic, potential, thermal, elastic, radiant, chemical, and more. All living systems require energy to carry out their many activities, and have developed strategies to use one or more energy form. To most effectively and efficiently capture energy, living systems must maximize exposure to them, using strategies appropriate to the given energy form. For example, some plants maximize their surface area available for capturing radiant energy from the sun while others have strategies to focus scattered light onto photosynthesizing areas.

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Detoxification/Purification of Air/Water/Waste

Ecosystems must be effective at cleaning air, water, and waste because so much of what is in the air, water, and waste is valuable to organisms as resources. In contrast to functions that detoxify or purify at the organism level, this is at a larger scale. To be effective at the ecosystem level, it isn’t the individual efforts of a few organisms that detoxifies and purifies, but the actions of a wide diversity of organisms each contributing to the whole. For example, as water flows through an ecosystem, either aboveground or in the soil, a diversity of organisms take different actions to slow it down, capture excess nutrients from it, and break down harmful chemicals into more benign ones.

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Patents

Rainmaker 330 Solar Water Distiller from SolAqua uses evaporation to create natural pH buffering to produce pure, clean water.

Benefits

Zero energy use

Applications

Solar stills

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 3: Good Health & Wellbeing
Goal 6: Clean Water & Sanitation
Goal 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities

The Challenge

Distillation processes that use steam, electric, or boiling techniques require large amounts of energy and can also leave purified water with a flat taste.

Innovation Details

The Rainmaker™ 330 is a solar still that collects rain and transforms it into clean drinking water. It uses the process of natural evaporation and condensation to allow for natural pH buffering that produces clean, excellent tasting water.

Biomimicry Story

Evaporation is the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas or vapor. Evaporation is the primary way that water moves from the liquid state back into the water cycle as atmospheric water vapor. Studies have shown that the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers provide nearly 90% of the moisture in the atmosphere via evaporation.

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