The Source is actually a “drinking water solar panel” that generates fresh, clean water delivered right to a tap.
Zero Mass Water is an Arizona company that is rolling out an innovative technology that can extract water from the air and condense it, with all the equipment being powered by the sun. The project is being funded by the Clinton Foundation.
According to figures from the World Health Organization, about 3.4 million people die every year from waterborne ailments. Having access to clean drinking water is often a labour-intensive exercise, and UNESCO estimates 40 billion hours are spent in Africa each year just walking to a water source. Just imagine how that amount of time could be utilized in performing other more productive tasks.
The air we breathe holds so much water and Zero Mass Labs predicts that areas nearest to the Earth’s surface alone contain enough water to sustain the world’s population for 15,000 years.
Apparently, each Source unit can produce enough water to cater for the daily needs for a household of four.
According to the project’s highlight from the Clinton Foundation, Zero Mass Water plans to deploy up to 100,000 Source units by December 2017.
“Achieving this level of deployment will impact the lives of as many as 200,000 people. These scaled deployments will produce over 90 million liters of drinking water per year,” the project overview stated.
What seems to be available in plenty all across the globe is salt or contaminated water. We’ve mentioned before that there are some solutions that can combine these sources and solar power to produce safe, clean drinking water. These include the Australian designed Carocell, the Desolenator and the simpler WADI and Solvatten.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have also recommended placing a rod made of tin oxide or titanium dioxide in a bucket of water as an effective way of decontaminating water.
In Australia, students at the University of Adelaide have developed an efficient water treatment system that integrates solar energy and the material mostly used to wrap chip packets.
In August this year, researchers launched a small solar device that works faster to disinfect contaminated water in just minutes.
With many solar-powered water decontamination options available these days; soon there will be no technological reason why anyone on the planet earth should be drinking dirty water. The only challenge now is getting these innovative products to the people who really need them.
