PSK/distillation device

Has anyone here ever considered drilling a hole in the PSK lid (before you’re in the survival situation)to use it as part of a distillation kit (with the added benefit that it is easier to use as a signal mirror)?

How would you seal the hole when the straw is in? With mud?

ryan
<img src="images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

If you have some design notes please share them. A fired still would be a very helpful thing in a long term (week or more) survival situation.

Not sure what role the hole (or the PSK tin) would play in an expedient still. What other materials are presumed on-hand for this still building? I can't envision how to set up a still with the materials in my PSK. Unless you are talking about a solar still in which case you don't need the PSK tin just the garbage bag in it.

Still would require

Boiling vessel,
Condensation coil - or equivalent
Collector
All of which need to be fire safe.

So you have your boiling vessel (the PSK tin) and maybe you have a teflon hose which you can rig up to the top in such a way that it doesn't melt. (not sure that this is possible) You aim the rising steam at the underside of your plastic garbage bag (which is directly over your small cook fire and will either condense as much creosote as water or it will melt).

Maybe you have something more sophisticated in mind but I am not sure what other materials you will have on-hand at a time when you are forced to rely upon your PSK.

If you're packing all of that you might as well include small packages of yeast, sugar and corn. Then the BATF will join the search as well

Heck, if I had all that the Long Term survival situation would rapidly devolve into vacation / retirement and I wouldn't want the BATF or anyone else (including my wife) looking!

Ok guys,
This is my distillation kit plan.

Psk tin - to bring unpurified water to evaporating temperatures by fixing it above a fire.

Straw - put it in the hole of the tin to pick up the droplets of water and bring it to my...

Emergency ration (biscuit) tin. In the lid of this tin is a hole to put the straw in and feed the droplets through.

Plastic bag - this is inside the tin which I take out, dig a hole in the ground, put the bag in the hole, fill it up with water and in the water goes the biscuit tin. The biscuit tin is then water-cooled and the droplets change back to liquid form.

I haven't tried this method yet but will if we have decided on this forum whether it is a good idea to have pre-drilled holes.

Reinhardt

I'm still not clear on how you expect the straw - which is going to cross over your fire on it's way to the cooling tin - from catching on fire and / or melting into a useless glob of plastic. Presuming that you solve somehow (perhaps you could use your foil to create a heat shield), you still will have a very limited boiling chamber and a difficult refill cycle.

Let's continue this discussion anyway I am sure we can figure out a design that will be fun to try! Please specify the exact materials. e.g. what is the straw in this design made of and where did you procure it? How large are these PSK tins? Are we talking about two altoids containers? If you have a bunch of foil you may be able to short the design a bit.

Let's try a bit of ASCII drawing
<pre><font class="small">code:</font><hr>

_____
__ __
__ __
- -
| |
| | <- foil dome
| | | |
|_| | | |_==== <- collecting straw
| |
|________________| <- foil or PSK pan

</pre><hr>
If you constructed something like this and place your outlet on the bottom of the curled under portion of the foil dome as shown you might be able to heat the side of the pan away from the straw. Perhaps you could use a small aluminum whistle as the start of the collecting straw and keep the plastic out of the fire that way. A construct like this would allow you to create a small still from a single PSK as the dome will be the condenser and the collecting straw could drain directly into your container.

Sounds like you have the basic distillation right but what are you using for a PSK tin? I think that an Altoids or tobacco tin sized container would be too small, the water would boil off so quickly that you'd constantly be recharging it. You might do better to pack along some foil to fabricate a boiler or pack a second mess tin or a canteen cup. Why are you distilling instead of just boiling? I don't see the need unless you're dealing with brackish or salt water. All of this pre-supposes that you have water to boil and fuel to boil it. Why aren't you just sticking with iodine or chlorine tabs? Are you just wanting a backup method of purification?

Ed

Hi Eodman,
It is a back up plan for when the puritabs and the iodine runs out. I would use the distillation kit if I want more reassurance then just boiling or, like you said seawater.

The reason I would use the PSK tin is because that is readily available and (nearly, straw and plastic bags are) nothing is extra weight. Mess tins you pack in your rucksack. You might have to ditch that. Every thing I mentiond here fits in my (future) chest rig.
(Now you mention it I could even use my metal mug as the boiler and the tin as catcher, I can easily pour the water in my cateen from the tin, connecting it back without burning my fingers. The metal mug has a large capacity and the top can be covered with aluminium foil. At the most I&#8217;ll only lose a few droplets.)

Of course I need fuel for the fire but nature is a rich source.

Anyway I appreciate the points you pointed out.

Reinhardt

Reinhardt,

I think that you are on the right track with your miniaturized still. I think that using the straw as a means of directing the steam to the condensing tin may cause you some problems, though.

First, in order to get as much steam as possible through the straw, you will have to seal the foil on the canteen cup.

Secondly, the steam will be moving through the straw too fast to be able to cool down very much, if at all. There will be virtually no cooling in the tube.

Thirdly, since the steam is expanded, it will need much more room in the condensing tin than it did in the canteen cup while in its liquid form. Even if you greatly cooled the condensing tin, I think that so much steam will escape the tin that it will not be worth your effort.

HOWEVER, if you could condense the steam before it gets to the tin, you'd be in good shape. The condensing tin now becomes just a vessel for holding the already-condensed water, and you may even be able to do without the plastic bag.

You might want to consider replacing the straw and the foil hood with a wide, tapered tube made out of aluminum foil. You want it to be wide because you want to take advantage of the greater surface area available, and you also want the steam to expand and slow down so it stays in contact with the foil as long as possible. Between the slowing of the steam and the heat-conductive properties of the foil, you should get a good bit of condensation with little loss of steam.

You might start with a cone-shaped tube about 3 feet long (for those of you on the other side of the pond, that's about 1 meter). I'd make one end about 50% larger than the boiler to catch any drifting steam, and then gradually taper the tube to about the size of your finger. Gradually bend this tube into a U or J shape and invert it. If you use the J shape, the wide end would be at the shorter end of the J. In either case, the wide end would be suspended just above the boiler, and the other end would be just above the receiving vessel. The rising steam would enter the wide end of the tube and would begin to cool. By the time the vapor got to the far end of the tube, most of it would be condensed.

If the 3 foot tube doesn't produce enough condensation, you might try lengthening it or adjusting the taper.

Please let us know how your idea works out.

Hi Tack,

Nice start off. My quick 2 cents.

When cooking/boiling etc. with "Altoid" type tins (as well as many others) consider that many of these tins are likely to have some sort of clear coating or lacquer on them, which is likely to add some unanticipated chemicals / flavoring / particles to the contents.

Like others, I concur with the idea of using something bigger than one of our prized tins.

Wow, how many times would you have to fill one to get a decent sized drink to begin with (if you were not thirsty before starting this small container distallation process, it is very likely that you would be by the time you finally got done LOL) not counting the spillage, lost steam vapor etc.

Good thread! Let's see where it leads. This is an avenue that I've not really seen addressed on these forums before.

Comanche7

I.m wondering if you could construct a modified solar still where you heat water with a small fire inside of a solar still. The steam would condense on the bag as it would from the normmal drop in temperature and run down to a collecting container. I think the collecting coontainer could be in the center and one or more fires on the side.

Another way might be to feed the tube from the top of a covered container into a solar still where it could condense.

I would love it if someone can figure out a way to set it up.

For the still to work you don't need to attain a rapid boil. A rapid boil presents it's own problems (melting your straw, soot on your condenser etc.) depending upon how much foil you have wrapped around your PSK you could form a smallish parabolic solar reflector box to heat the source water. Stretch clear plastic "garbage" bag over the top to trap heat and provide condensing surface and drain the condensate off from the bottom. This is a low pressure "augmented" solar still approach. Depends upon good sun and abundant water and a lot of foil.

None of these options has the potential for great amounts of production without much larger apparatus than we are likely to construct from the materials in a PSK. The solar approaches have the advantage that they don't require as much tending. you don't need to keep the fire going or prevent it from damaging the equipment. The disadvantage is that you don't work as fast.


A simple variant of this can be made by digging two troughs - one wide and the other narrow running east-west. Place a clear plastic bag length wise accross both trenches such that the southern edge of the bag just covers the southern trench. Use expedient props to hold up the northern edge of the bag so that it forms a triangle facing south with the open end either east or west. Fill the wider - northern trench with source water inside the bag seal the open end. As the sun shines into the bag it will warm the water and the entire interior of the bag. Some of the water will be evaporated and condense on the top of the bag where it will flow downhill into the southern trench. If you remove water from the southern trench and fil the northern trench you will get water. This is essentially the way some commercial solar desalination plants work

Is their anyway you could supply a diagram or picture of both methods?

How much gear would I need to carry a distillation kit and what would you recommend?

go here and checkout the simple cookers. Add a solar still type plastic enclosure around the entire thing in clear plastic for any of these simple solar ovens and the water will condense on the inside of the plastic enclosure and flow downhill for removal.

The two trench method is simpler but less effective. I am still looking for an image for you.

Given enough available fuel for a fire and some fist sized rocks, I’d build a modified solar still. By digging the hole deeper and setting the collecting container up on a stand, you could put rocks heated in a fire under the stand and pour the contaminated water onto the hot rocks. I think that would be a lot more efficient than trying to rig a PSK tin as a distillery and since the fire doesn’t have any contact with the still, no worries about melting equipment.

Once I am back home (i'm in Holland right now) I'll go and try a couple of ideas. I'll even see if i can get hold of a digital camera so I am able to post the pics.

But while experimenting this is what i keep in mind:
1. I am trying to create a model only with the tools I probably will have on me in a survival situation

2. keep it light. I could carry a whole seperate distillation kit on me but not only would that take away the effectivenes but also the fun in experimenting.

I can't wait.

Ryan

Last night I checked the Lofty Wiseman SAS survival handbook and he wrote some interesting info about distilling water. Basically that in theory my idea does work. So for those of you who have it check it out!

Reinhardt