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Mark @ BoingBoing points us to this homemade water purifier build by a retired Russian engineer.
DIY water purifier
Posted by Becky Stern |
Nov 13, 2009 04:00 PM
DIY Projects |
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"by a" instead of "buy".
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Google translator seems to do a reasonable job here :
http://tinyurl.com/yjnnz3l
However, I'm not at all sure about all the stages in this process. Even assuming that the bit about classical music is a joke, passing it through a jar with silver and a jar with magnets, seems a bit ... woo-woo?
I mean, I know that dissolved silver has some weak antibiotic properties, but passing water through a jar that also contains a little bit of silver isn't really the same thing.
Same with the magnets. I'm sure if the water was contaminated by iron filings, this would get it out, but dissolved metals in general?
Is it at all likely that this whole assembly does any better than if he had just used the carbon filter on its own?
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... Or maybe this was intended as a humor article and it just went straight over my head.
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I've worked in Eastern Europe and magnetic filters are something that always gets installed before a purifier. I think there's something different about the water in the eastern block that makes magnetic filters mandatory. Perhaps it's iron particles or just some sort of gunk from the pipes.
He uses an UVlamp to kill the bacteria, filters it through sand. That alone should result in very clear water.
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Silver salts tend to have decent antimicrobial properties, but silver itself is marginal at best. Likewise, it needs to be filtered over a large surface area as opposed to some silver in a jug. However, various precious-metal filters can help remove some impurities in the water. Also, 70C water won't kill everything, and somehow I doubt putting it through a tube wrapped around the hot water line would get it to that temperature in the first place. Cooling through the freezer wouldn't be terribly efficient either (the freezer would consume much more power than normal). The rocks may add minerals at first, but would not completely dissolve after a while without active pressure on them. The nutrients in the cereal would have a similar problem and it would occur much faster. Simply having magnets will remove little iron. The charcoal filter is probably doing most of the work here.
Overall, it is a really cool idea, and could be much better. The concepts are all there, but their implementation is questionable at best.
Still, even if you set all of this up to work well, these sorts of mechanisms (magnetic particle removing, carbon filter, nutrient infusion, etc.) would need to be replaced on a regular basis. It's a good concept, but has a few issues and would need a good deal of regular maintenance.
At least it's out there now. Now let's see some people take it to the next level.
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