You may not know Dean Kamen by name or by sight but you’ve undoubtedly seen the invention that rocketed him to stardom on TV, in movies, and maybe even in person. It’s called a Segway. Kamen is back with a new invention, this one without wheels.
Kamen’s latest brain-child, called “Slingshot” after the fabled weapon used by David to tackle the monstrous Goliath, takes dirty river water, ocean water and even raw sewage and turns it into pure drinking water without the energy and tons of machinery required to clean dirty water under conventional means.
Does it work? In the summer of 2006 Kamen delivered two Slingshots to a small community in Honduras for a trial. During the month they were there the machines were fed whatever water the villagers could find, it was processed and turned into clean, potable water.
The magic behind Slingshot is a ground breaking technology called “vapor compression distilling”. The Slingshot boils and vaporizes the polluted source water in one storage tank. The vapor is then distilled and cooled to form clean, potable water in a second tank. What’s significant about Kamen’s invention is it uses less electricity than it takes to run a hair dryer.
Kamen’s Slingshot unfortunately comes with a hefty price tag. Each machine costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. So Kamen is looking to partner with companies and organizations to distribute the Slingshots around the world.
Each Slingshot can purify about 250 gallons of water a day – enough water for 100 people.
Take a look at the Slingshot in action in this great video from Discovery Channel.
I can totally see this idea being used on airplanes, RV’s, campground bathrooms, and maybe even in your own home someday.
That’s incredible!
Imagine how many of these could be produced if governments around the world reallocated some of the already Billions or even Trillions of dollars they spend each year on programs to “help” people get access to clean water, reduce pollution, etc.
There could be clean water available in the slums of 3rd world nations and we could cut the use of natural resources by recycling the water in our own homes.
We could even make the run off from factories free of chemicals before it’s dumped back into our rivers. The possibilities are endless, and with the right backing this technology could be affordable.
Great article.
I love this!!!! What a brilliant idea. I do hope he can find some companies to partner with. I am sure he will! Thank you for a great post.
This is amazing! I definitely want one. And I am going to hide it well, if water is going to become so scarce.
Actually it makes too much sense. One wonders why it wasn’t invented earlier? Even as a child I thought that making pure water should not be so complicated as all one really has to do is distill …