Say the apocalypse happens tomorrow. The good news: You survive! No more credit card debt or miserable commutes. The bad news? Infrastructure has collapsed and there’s no clean drinking water. Most people can’t last a few days without it, so what we need is a reliable way to purify some from toxic soup.
Distillation covers nearly all bases, freeing H2O of salts, pollutants, microbes, viruses, and other nasties. A common method is moonshine-style, using sealed pots, fire, and complex plumbing. Or it can be done more safely and lazily by harnessing the sun.
Solar stills elegantly miniaturize the cycle that draws water from oceans and lakes, stores it in clouds, and returns it to Earth as rain. I made the one below using caulk and tools from my workshop, plus a windshield, wooden pallets, duct tape, and simple plumbing I salvaged from a nearby Dumpster.
Suspect water goes into a shallow box; the sun shines through the windshield and evaporates the water—leaving behind a stew of contaminants. When the vapor hits the cooler windshield, it condenses back into liquid, trickles into a gutter, and drips into a bucket.
How much did I trust this theory and pile of garbage to purify water? To the death—or at least crippling diarrhea. I started with a filthy sample pulled from the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund cleanup site. An average cupful contains heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and pathogens.
What emerged from the still hours later was clean, clear, and drinkable—no trip to the emergency room required.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
