Seems to be a very low cost, low tech water purifying system for developing areas.

watercone website

Can you use this as a sun-hat and still purify water? Or better: as a rain purifying hat !

I think it has potential on the scale of Giza pyramids.

Yet another solar still.
I think it is a great idea for poeple that live in sun blasted coastal desert areas.
I suppose it would function anywhere you have lots of strong sunlight and dirty water to work with too.
I wonder how strong the sun has to be for it to destill enough water to be effective?
It is a nice item and I am glad to see it.

Mass-Marketed solar still.
COOL idea for sure.

I think it looks great. It could be sped up by putting a cup of boiling water that needs to be distilled under this cone. Or lifting the cone a little bit above the ground and placing a stove with a cup of boiling water underneath. Assuming that the plastic can withstand high temperature without leaving some bad stuff in the distilled water.

Looks like a variation on the SOLAS survival at sea that's been around for decades.

Completely ineffective (as I understand the matter) at sea because of wave action.

Biggest issue that I have with it is how much water does it produce, and how many do you need per person?

I think that a large scale version might have possibilities. Per square foot of ground, a large version would be more efficient. In fact, I cannot see any reason why it has to be round rather than square or oblong.

The sticking point for me about a lot of these solar de-salination ideas is why haven't they been used more extensively in the middle east? Lots of sun, lots of capital, very expensive water. There must be a major flaw somewhere if it's not economical to run them there.

Well that´s interesting point. Maybe somewhere where is not true free market someone doesn´t want to see this happening and wants to keep the price of the water high. Maybe there is other issue. I don´t know.
Recently I saw documentary A World Without Water. There were some people that had to use dirty water. I was thinking that several pieces of this cone or something similar would make a big difference and wouldn´t cost too much if it works as advertised.
I also donate some money to organizations and projects that should help a good thing from time to time and after watching this documentary I immediately sent some money to one of these projects that is designed to help in the areas without water because what I saw was quite rough and sad.

I don´t see the size of the cone as a problem. You can catch up the size with big number of the units. Big cones would be harder to manipulate.

Let's not confuse stuff here. SOLAS is a set of standards (Safety Of Life At Sea) for various equipment and requirements for equipage. Contrary to popular use, there are no SOLAS Regulations or Approvals, that is all done by national authorities (e.g. U.S. Coast Guard for the U.S.). SOLAS doesn't really have anything to so with Solar Stills per se, but they could theoretically be used to meet various SOLAS standards for fresh water producing devices in lieu of stored water in some circumstances.


Actually they can be effective, but are temperamental and won't work without sunny skies and/or in heavy seas (usually accompanied by bad weather anyway). Read Adrift by Steve Callahan for a story where they saved his life, albeit with careful tending and improvisation on Steve's part.

A lot of the desalination projects in the Middle East are intended to provide large volumes to cities.
I think a lot of them are reverse osmosis units, but I am not sure about that at all.

Here is something about a distillation plant in Saudi Arabia
http://www.water-technology.net/projects/shuaiba/

They tell in the article why they used flash distillation instead of reverse osmosis, but they note in passing that reverse osmosis is a common method too.

This article outlines a bit of the scale of the problem and the problem of meeting it with solar desalinization plants.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3520

It produces 1.7 litres of water per day.

The round shape is probably easier and cheaper to produce.

And older article on the Watercone (when the inventor first came up with it and was looking for financial backers) said the price was $150 US per unit. That's pretty expensive, even if it was made from Lexan. http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Ultra-Cheap_20Solar_20Water_20Distillation

Edit: That was the price in 2006, the price indicated on the site is $50 US. Still high for the people who really need it.

Sue