When in times of trouble...Mother Mary comes to me....there will be an answer....let it pee ...let it pee lol

~~~when ye find yourselves in times of trouble...mother Mary comforts thee! bringing words of wisdom...let it peeeee~ let it pee!

thanks for the laugh...and to think I was off looking for something to bring back on the water desalination in Milolii Hawaii. How boring am I?

You are making buns? Ferry funny!

Distillation by sun heat can be a very simple means of getting a little bit of drinking water on a lifeboat.

To get more significant amounts, optimized units work at several pressures (hence temperatures) so that the condensation heat of distilled water evaporates sea water at a somewhat lower pressure. You need heat from the Sun only once.

Planning such a project generally involves producing also electricity and home heating from the steam.

However, distillation methods are always expensive, because water absorbs an awful lot of heat to vaporize.

All modern processes use reverse osmosis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis
as it takes far less energy since the water isn't vaporized.

Alas, even reverse osmosis is expensive. Some of Spain's tourist cities (on the Costa Lotta) use it to feed (¿apastecer?) homes, as this is a requisite to attract tourists. Adelaide, in Australia, has such plans. But agriculture can't rely on this - emirates do have some farms, but profitability isn't their prime goal.

Milolii uses solar to desalinize about 1000 gallons a day for the small fishing village.

http://www.ibiblio.org/london/permaculture...2/msg02525.html

Whoever invents the cheap simple method on a large scale will rule the world. Water availability will eventually be our greatest challenge. "Global Warming" will be a non sequitur. If ever a scientist wanted to make a pile of money, this is it.

Milolii: Nice project.

However, complete computations support the idea of converting sunlight to electricity by a thermal means, and use the electricity in reverse osmosis.

Not quite as direct and elegant... But better efficiency per m2 and per $.

There are also projects to produce electricity from temperature differences between surface and depth in the oceans (tested in Hawaii as well, I think). Many of the processes make fresh water as a by-product, which is seen as a decisive advantage.

One stupid obstacle is that as soon as you have pumped cool water from deep in the ocean, people don't let you use it to produce electricity: they want it immediately to keep the air and the lobsters cool in their restaurants.