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Tue Sep 13, 2011 at 23:27:59 PM EDT
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Solar water disinfection
http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN
A two liter plastic bottle can be made into a water treatment system simply by filling it with contaminated water and exposing it to the sun. Sodis is an organization that promotes this technology around the world.
The disinfection process can be speeded by turning aluminized mylar snack food bags inside out and making them into reflectors as two young students in Belo Horizonte, Brazil discovered: http://calais.phase2technology...
Solar bottle bulbs for daylighting
http://www.elliottlemenager.co...
In 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof. First shown at the Globo Reporter in the 25th May 2007.
Alfredo Moser was pressed by a scarce electricity substitution and found out that he could light his house with a bottle of water filled with water and a protection cap made of camera film.
The bottle is just refracting sunlight very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light. Scientist have now visited Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential. |
| gmoke :: Trash Technology and Recycled Solar: Plastic Bottles |
That was 2002. Now over 10,000 households, small businesses, and schools in the Philippines have installed solar bottle bulbs. Iliac Diaz of Liter of Light is attempting to spread it worldwide.
http://isanglitrongliwanag.org/
http://www.csmonitor.com/World...
The invention is something that is so simple, cheap, and sustainable that anyone can create and maintain it themselves.
As Diaz says, the three rules of appropriate technology are that people can find it, they can replicate it, and most importantly, they can make a business of it.
Here's another Brazilian design, for a PET bottle hot water heater
http://www.temasactuales.com/t...
There are also plastic bottle houses
from Argentina
http://www.odditycentral.com/p...
and Nigeria
http://nationaldailyngr.com/in...
In Nigeria, they fill the bottles with sand or dirt to make bottle bricks.
Here's a backpacker solar water heater
http://www.instructables.com/i...
A recycled solar cloche or cold frame for the garden
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
All these devices make use of the Simple Solar Principles
Dark gets hot
Light reflects
Clear keeps the wind out
Most any and everybody can understand how to build and use them.
Even when a plastic bottle is chopped up, it may still help in purifying water
http://portal.acs.org/portal/a...
"Plastic bottle" solution for arsenic-contaminated water threatening 100 million people
Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.
DENVER, Aug. 31, 2011
"Dealing with arsenic contamination of drinking water in the developing world requires simple technology based on locally available materials," said study leader Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, Ph.D., professor of analytical and environmental chemistry at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J. "Our process uses pieces of plastic water, soda pop and other beverage bottles. Coat the pieces with cysteine - that's an amino acid found in dietary supplements and foods - and stir the plastic in arsenic-contaminated water. This works like a magnet. The cysteine binds up the arsenic. Remove the plastic and you have drinkable water."
Water bottles walls, hanging bottles in south-facing windows in south-facing windows, is folk technology that goes back at least to the 19th century. Always wanted to set up a stacked thermosyphon from one gallon to five gallon container to another to see how that would affect the system. Has anyone combined solar water disinfection with solar daylighting? How about water collection and treatment with solar daylighting, water and space heating, plus PV power as one integrated system.
Previously:
Trash Technology for Education and Survival
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Fastfood Containers as Solar Devices
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Recycled solar
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
Solar Is Civil Defense
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
Small-scale LED Lighting, Off-Grid Cell Phones
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
Solar Insurgency
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
Solar Swadeshi
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
Gandhian Economics
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/...
All I know about simple solar is at
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2...
crossposted to http://solarray.blogspot.com/2... |
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"Now, is this the deal I would have preferred? No. I believe that we could have made the tough choices required - on entitlement reform and tax reform - right now, rather than through a special congressional committee process. But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year. Most importantly, it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of America."
--President Barack Obama on the debt ceiling "deal"
"Despite Democratic control over the White House, despite Democratic control over the Senate, despite overwhelming opposition from the American people, a small minority of the members of the Republican-controlled House have successfully pushed an extreme right-wing agenda onto the American political landscape. It is an ideology which believes that despite the fact that the rich are getting richer, the middle class is shrinking, and poverty is increasing, all - all of the burden for deficit reduction should rest on working people."
--Independent Senator Bernie Sanders on the debt ceiling "deal"
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Then and Now
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Then...
"Last year Evergreen, a Massachusetts company, agreed to establish their first-ever United States based manufacturing facility here in Massachusetts. They did so, or are doing so, at Devens. They have now agreed and chosen to triple their size at Devens. Their next phase of expansion, right here in Massachusetts, a signature company in a signature sector, and we congratulate all of the folks at Evergreen and look forward to continuing to work with you...
We made a personal commitment to Evergreen for the sake of Evergreen, but also because we wanted to show that there are ways in which state government, in working together with private industry and with the utility companies, could begin to create a different kind of environment, a different kind of business climate here, to grow that sector, and it is happening. It's happening. Evergreen is one of the most prominent examples, but there are a whole host of examples."
--Governor Deval Patrick, April 7, 2008, boasting about state investment in Evergreen.
and Now...
"Evergreen Solar Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, completing a stunning reversal of fortune for a high-flying alternative-energy company that once seemed to herald a new era for the Massachusetts economy... At its peak, Evergreen employed roughly 900 people locally and attracted more than $50 million in state support, as its stock price soared above $100 a share.
Yesterday, Evergreen's stock closed at 18 cents. The company shuttered its manufacturing plant in Devens earlier this year and now has only 85 employees left. Massachusetts is one of its top creditors, owed $1.5 million in rent."
--Erin Ailworth, Boston Globe, August 16, 2011
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