Have always thought that Reverse Osmosis plants were the Cup of Jamshid, as far as water purification goes. And also small and low power enough that a system in a cargo container can be air dropped, and run off solar cells, in a disaster zone.
If Kamen's invention is much better, why aren't we seeing more of them in a CSR Blitzkrieg in India? Cheers, Vinay > On 22-Jun-2014, at 9:38 am, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 5:29 PM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: >>> http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682625/turn-your-waterbottle-into-a-brita-with-this-coconut-filter >>> >>> >>> Turn Your Waterbottle Into A Brita With This Coconut Filter >> >> And another: >> >> http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0089934 > > Some more in this vein, although the best news in this is the > partnership with Coca Cola, which, as the article says, is " arguably > the largest, most sophisticated distribution system in the world. > That’s important because the scale of the water crisis the world faces > is unprecedented." > > http://www.popsci.com/article/science/pure-genius-how-dean-kamens-invention-could-bring-clean-water-millions > > Pure Genius: How Dean Kamen's Invention Could Bring Clean Water To Millions > > He just needs to get it to them. > > By > Tom Foster > Posted 06.16.2014 at 11:48 am > > At first glance, the bright red shipping container that sits by the > side of the road in a slum outside Johannesburg doesn’t look like > something that could transform hundreds of lives. Two sliding doors > open to reveal a small shop counter, behind which sit rows of canned > food, toilet paper, cooking oil, and first-aid supplies. Solar panels > on the roof power wireless Internet and a television, for the > occasional soccer game. And two faucets dispense free purified > drinking water to anyone who wants it. > > Created primarily by Coca-Cola and Deka Research and Development, the > New Hampshire company founded by inventor Dean Kamen, the container is > meant to be a kind of “downtown in a box”: a web-connected > bodega-cum-community center that can be dropped into underdeveloped > villages all over the world. Coke calls it an Ekocenter. It’s a pithy > name, but it masks the transformative technology hidden within the > container. > > Inside the big red box sits a smaller one, about the size of a dorm > fridge, called a Slingshot. It was developed by Kamen, the mastermind > behind dozens of medical-equipment inventions and, most famously, the > Segway personal transportation device. Kamen is the closest thing to a > modern-day Thomas Edison. He holds hundreds of patents, and his > creations have improved countless lives. His current projects include > a robotic prosthetic arm for DARPA and a Stirling engine that > generates affordable electricity by using “anything that burns” for > fuel. The Slingshot, more than 10 years in the making, could have a > bigger impact than all of his other inventions combined. > > Kamen’s company, Deka, inhabits three refurbished 19th-century > textile-mill buildings in Manchester, New Hampshire. > Photograph by JJ Sulin > > Using a process called vapor compression distillation, a single > Slingshot can purify more than 250,000 liters of water per year, > enough to satisfy the needs of about 300 people. And it can do so with > any water source—sewage, seawater, chemical waste—no matter how dirty. > > For communities that lack clean water, the benefit is obvious, but to > realize that potential, the Slingshot needs to reach them first. Which > is where Coke comes in: The company is not just a soft-drink peddler; > it is arguably the largest, most sophisticated distribution system in > the world. That’s important because the scale of the water crisis the > world faces is unprecedented. > > Water seems so abundant it’s easy to forget how many people don’t have > a clean source of it. According to the World Health Organization, > nearly a billion people lack ready access to safe drinking water, and > hundreds of thousands die every year as a result. Many more fall > terribly ill. > > Plenty of water-purification tools exist, of course—chlorine tablets, > reverse-osmosis plants—but they all have drawbacks. Either they’re not > adequately portable; they require replacement parts that can be hard > to come by; or, most vexing of all, they remove only certain kinds of > impurities, leaving others to poison the unwitting. > > Kamen calls the global water crisis a “Goliath” of a problem, which > suggests that he is David. He offers a quick refresher on biblical > lore: David, it bears remembering, defeated Goliath with a slingshot. > > “In my life, nothing is ever simple or easy,” Kamen says. “I didn’t > wake up one day and say, ‘Wow, there’s a global water problem. I think > I’ll work on that.’ ” He’s sitting in his office in an old brick mill > building by the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire. A > life-size cardboard Darth Vader leans against one wall, and a wooden > chair painted to resemble a seated Albert Einstein sits among a circle > of leather swivel chairs. Photos of Kamen’s various helicopters (he’s > had a number over the years and occasionally flies to Deka from his > hilltop estate) hang on the wall while outtakes from his dad’s work as > an illustrator for Mad Magazine and Tales from the Crypt decorate the > hallway outside. > > When we first sat down, I asked Kamen a simple question: How did you > get interested in the water crisis? The answer turned into a > highlights tour of his career, before he became famous or wealthy. > Kamen is a natural storyteller, and his narrative unspools at high > speed. Now 63, he grew up in Long Island, New York, and he ended up > leaving college to start his first company, AutoSyringe, in 1976, to > address a problem he’d heard about from his brother, a medical > student: Certain patients needed such frequent treatment that trips to > the hospital prevented them from living productive lives. Kamen’s > solution was the world’s first wearable infusion pump, which > administered doses of medication automatically. It was a hit, and > Kamen sold AutoSyringe to Baxter International, a health-care company. > He was just 30 years old. > > Suddenly a millionaire, Kamen moved to Manchester and started Deka > (derived from his first and last names). With a few exceptions, such > as the now ubiquitous Segway, much of the company’s work has focused > on medical innovations that solve lifestyle problems. One such > project, begun 20-some years ago, was a machine to reinvent dialysis > for patients with failing kidneys. Baxter International had built a > device to do what’s called peritoneal dialysis, which involves filling > the abdomen with a sterile saline solution and using the body’s own > membranes to filter the blood. It’s less traumatic than hemodialysis, > which requires passing blood through an external filter, but the > contraption was noisy and bulky. The company asked Kamen to refine it. > > We’d empty half the hospital beds in the world if we just gave people > clean water. > > Called HomeChoice, Kamen’s design was small enough to fit on patients’ > nightstands and quiet enough that they could sleep while it worked. > The machine required a lot of purified water, however—many gallons a > day per patient—and that wasn’t cost-effective. Kamen’s instinct: > Invent a medical-grade water purifier, so that patients could use > water from their faucets as the base for their dialysis solution. He > knew that existing purification systems, mostly based on filtration, > weren’t exacting enough to meet his needs, so he looked to > distillation. In Kamen’s eyes, distillation was magical in its > simplicity. “The sun will evaporate the water out of an open latrine, > and it will leave behind all of the bioburden, Cryptosporidium, and > Giardia,” he says. “It will even separate the water from the arsenic > and hexavalent chromium in a chemical waste site.” > > As is so often the case, innovation, when it strikes, is an > obvious-in-retrospect connection between seemingly disparate ideas. > Kamen’s unique brand of genius is that he can recognize those > connections and see their potential where others can’t. > > But fitting one of the planet’s most elegant systems into a home > appliance is not without its challenges. For his distillation machine > to work, it would need to boil many gallons of water per hour, and > that would require more energy than everything else in a typical U.S. > home combined. So Kamen and his engineers exploited another basic > scientific principle. To vaporize, water must get hot, and to do that, > it absorbs energy. When the vapor condenses back into liquid, that > energy gets released. If the team could recycle it, Kamen reasoned, > they’d have a much more efficient process. They designed a > “counterflow heat exchanger” that would run cool incoming liquid past > superheated distilled water that had been vaporized and compressed. > The difference in temperature would simultaneously cool the outgoing > water and flash-boil the incoming liquid. All they would need is > enough energy to get some water boiling and a little extra energy to > power a compressor. > > Kamen leans forward and grins as he ties the first chapter of his > story together. “We said, ‘Wait, we can build a device that could take > any input water, whether it’s got bioburden, organics, inorganics, > chrome . . .and we can make pure water come out? We can put it in > somebody’s house and make a supply of water for injection that would > meet the U.S. Pharmacopeial standard, on less power than a handheld > hair dryer, and we could make a thousand liters a day?’ ” Imagine how > valuable that could be. > > As the plan for his water purifier took shape, Kamen found himself > thinking a lot about disaster relief. Whenever an earthquake or > tsunami struck, aid organizations would request clean water before > anything else because local supplies were tainted with sewage or > chemicals. Kamen thought, “I’ve been trying to make a box small enough > that you could carry it around for mobile dialysis, and it makes 250 > gallons a day—that would be enough for a hundred people in a crisis.” > More to the point, why not use the machine to help entire villages, or > even nations, with persistent water needs? > > “There are nearly a billion people in the world that get up every > morning and their primary goal is to find water,” Kamen says. “Many > travel great distances to find water that won’t kill them. And sadly, > hundreds of thousands of times a year it does kill, mostly kids.” With > Kamen’s purifier, people could just stick a hose in their dirty > laundry water, a polluted river, or even their own toilet pit, and > crystal-clear, microbe-free water would stream out of the machine. > > The question was how to get the purifiers mass-produced and into the > hands of those who needed them. Kamen started by approaching global > aid organizations. Jim Scott, who works in business development for > Deka, says the groups simply weren’t set up to scale the technology. > “I think it’s probably very daunting if you’re an organization that > doesn’t do that,” he says. > > The medical and pharmaceutical companies Kamen had worked with over > the years weren’t much better positioned to help. They had > infrastructure in developed nations but not in the 100-odd countries > where he hoped to see the technology deployed. > > Frustrated, Kamen had another obvious-in-retrospect insight. “You talk > to people that travel a lot and they say, ‘If there’s one thing you > can buy anywhere in the world, it’s a Coke.’ You know the joke: A guy > takes three weeks climbing to the top of Mount Everest; he gets to the > top and buys himself a Coke. So I thought, Coke is something you > drink, and they have coolers that are about the size of our machine, > and they have bottling partnerships around the world. I’m going to go > and try to convince them to do this.” > > Coke’s response to Kamen’s unorthodox overture: Glad to hear from you, > but how about doing another project first? That was in 2005, and one > of the company’s challenges at the time was to develop a better soda > fountain. Kamen teamed up with Nilang Patel, the former head of Coke’s > research lab. Drawing from medical equipment Kamen had developed to > precisely administer insulin and chemotherapy drugs, they created the > Freestyle. The freestanding dispenser combines concentrated > ingredients stored in small cartridges (as opposed to five-gallon bags > of syrup) with carbonated water and sweeteners to create as many as > 100 different drinks. > > By 2009, the Freestyle was in production, and Kamen reminded Coke > about the handshake deal to pursue what he was by then calling the > Slingshot. In the interim, though, Coke had gotten a new CEO and > chairman, Muhtar Kent. Kamen feared he’d have to “grovel and beg” for > support, but, he says, “within a couple of minutes of meeting Muhtar, > I realized he’s not like an accounting guy; he’s a big-picture, global > thinker. > > “ ‘Dean,’ he says to me, ‘if we can make the water, why can’t we do > other things too?’ ” Providing clean water could be the cornerstone of > what’s known as a bottom-of-the-pyramid strategy for developing > markets. By providing the poorest people in the world with new > technologies, services, and opportunities, a company can help lift > them out of poverty and transform them into viable customers. Hence, > the Ekocenter concept took shape as a companion to the water purifier, > at least in some markets. > > Coca-Cola launched the first Ekocenter in Heidelberg, South Africa in > August 2013. A slingshot attached to the faucets provides clean water. > Courtesy Coca Cola > > “We believe Coca-Cola’s business can only be as healthy as the > community it is part of, so the well-being of the community is > important to our long-term strategy,” says Derk Hendriksen, the > general manager of the Ekocenter program. Notably, the company won’t > directly profit from the program; each “downtown in a box” will > operate as a standalone business run by a local entrepreneur, > typically a woman, selected and trained by Coke. (That the soda giant > enjoys an image boost in the process goes without saying.) > > In 2011, Coke and Deka sent 15 Slingshots to Ghana for a six-month > field test where they provided clean water to five rural schools. In > fall 2013, Coke and its partners announced a goal to place up to 2,000 > units (either standalone Slingshots or Ekocenters) around Africa, > Asia, and Latin America by the end of 2015. “The commitment we made is > to provide 500 million liters of safe drinking water to communities in > need on a yearly basis,” Hendriksen says. That would translate into > improving the lives of 500,000 people a year. > > Kamen, being Kamen, sees the current goals of the Coke partnership as > the first step toward a much larger one. “Fifty percent of all the > people in the developing world suffer from waterborne pathogens,” he > says. “We’d empty half the beds in all the hospitals in the world if > we just gave people clean water.” The Slingshot won’t be the solution > for all of those people, Kamen says, but he sees no reason not to > strive for that. > > One way he might extend the reach of the Slingshot is to pair it with > his energy-efficient Stirling generator, another longtime passion > project. Rather than by internal combustion, a Stirling engine works > by expanding and contracting a gas in a closed system by heating and > cooling it. The concept dates from the early 1800s but never found > much practical use. The engine in Kamen’s generator requires nothing > more than waste, leaves, or some other flammable material for fuel; a > test unit in Bangladesh ran for six months on cow dung. Combined with > a Slingshot, the Stirling generator would enable the purification of > water anywhere, regardless of access to the electric grid or a bunch > of solar panels on an Ekocenter. > > This is crucial because many of the places that lack clean water also > lack reliable electricity. Kamen has already established a > relationship with NRG Energy, the same company that supplies solar > panels to the Ekocenters, to discuss development. “We can bring base > power to more than a billion people,” he says. That’s more than twice > the number of people he could help with Slingshot alone and nearly a > quarter of the global population. Of course, it would never occur to > Dean Kamen to stop there. > > Dean Kamen At A Glance > > Education: Dropped out of college > > Company: Deka Research and Development > > Why you’ve heard of him: He developed the Segway, along with dozens of > medical devices > > Passion: He founded FIRST, which sponsors student robotics > competitions. Last year, 350,000 kids (and 28,800 robots) participated > globally. > > How It Works: Slingshot Water Purifier > > The system needs only enough energy to start the first boil, and a > little more to power the compressor and pump. That’s supplied by an > outlet or a solar panel; all the subsequent boiling and cooling > self-perpetuates. > > One: The user places a hose in any dirty water source—say, a polluted > river or well—and a small pump draws the fluid into a boiling chamber. > As the water reaches roughly 100°C, it turns to steam, which leaves > behind any pollutants. They flow out of the chamber via a separate > hose. > > Two: The steam rises into a compressor, which squeezes it and thereby > raises its pressure and its temperature by about 10°C more. The > high-pressure vapor now has a higher boiling point, which means it can > condense back into water at a temperature greater than 100°C. > > Three: A counterflow heat exchanger runs the superheated water past > the incoming flow of dirty water. The process heats the incoming water > and cools the hot water to room temperature. That distilled water is > ready to drink, while the dirty water vaporizes and begins the process > all over again. > > This article originally appeared in the June 2014 issue of Popular Science. > > > > -- > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) >
