I saw a book written by a guy who walked the entire coast of Baja, both sides. He had a tea kettle rig that enabled him to distill fresh water from sea water over his campfire. Looks kinda like this. Does anyone know of a rig that doesn't look so heavy? How about a home-made version for backpacking the coasts?
I either want to buy one or make one, but it has to be as light and less bulky as possible. It seems pretty easy; just a tea kettle and a length of stainless tubing; the only difficulty I can see is a smart connection between the two, or a way to store the tubing inside the kettle when not in use. ??? I am somewhat of a perfectionist, so of course I need some more ideas.

I've heard of these things described but I've never seen an actual one.

The ones I've heard of use a kettle with tubing attached to the spout, then coiled through cold water (a stream or another pot) and into a 3rd to collect the distilled water. The lid needs to seal really well and I imagine the elevation of each vessel could be critical.

It would seem to me that if you took the Kellty Kettle or the Thermette and fabricated an adaptor w/ a metal coil to fit the pouring spout you could jury-rig an efficient distiller. The companies might even be willing to develop a proto-type for you to field trial as a potential accessory.

Pete

Does the tea kettle need to be stainless too?

Anything that you can boil water in is fine as long as it's sealed enough to get the steam out the tubing/pipe. Stainless might be a good idea though (or titanium). If you ran out of water and weren't paying attention, aluminum or some other choices would succumb to the heat fast.

You might be able to find a coil through a homebrew supplier. Someone who homebrews might have use for a "wort chiller," although I have never needed one. For an example, see: http://www.homebrewit.com/aisle/p/5006. Your tubing to the chiller would need to be sufficient to withstand the heat, but the chiller should work well.

If you want something that is portable to use a still, why not a solar still like: http://www.landfallnavigation.com/memss.html.

Dan Mcl,
As far as cooling your wort. Get a wort chiller. The faster you cool and pitch your yeast the more stable you final product will be. Slow cooling increases the chance of "hot side aeration" which causes beer to oxidize. Wort chillers are easy to make.
Sorry for the hijack.

For copper tubing go to Home Depot and get it in the A/C section.
If you make a basic still you can distill the water out of many liquids including sea water.
Bill

I read this book too. There's in interesting shot in there of him standing on a rattlesnake while he cuts off the head. He was always getting stranded by the tide off rocky headlands. It's a very interesting story and a good read. Somewhere I still have the book but can't remember the title. His still seemed to work quite well and, at the time, I was quite interested in it since I live near the ocean.

The only problem with using a Kelly Kettle or Thermette is that you must take care to not build up pressure, especially with the Kelly Kettle since the bottom seam is not sealed that tightly.

Also, neither the Kelly Kettle or Thermette can be scrubed out. Salt will build up inside and make them unsuitable for potable water boiling.

anyone who has use a small distiller like that--think--
high school chem class--will tell you that it takes
forever to get anything worth drinking out of it..drip-drip
drip-drip---find fuel..keep the fire going--drip-drip..
i would need to see some numbers on this--quarts per hour..
pints per hour???---