No experience, but I'll make up for that with lots and lots of opinions...

My gut feeling is that they're as practical as boiling water in a sheet of paper (folded into a cup). Scientifically, the principle behind those ideas is sound, and they can be demonstrated to work. But the usefulness and practical output is so limited it isn't worth the effort except perhaps under a very limited set of circumstances.


That is my theory, anyway. I will bow to and concur to anyone that has successfully been able to produce, say, one gallon per person per day. Preferably two gallons.


Cody Lundin writes somewhere that he has made his students try this and other exotic methods (solar still etc) in the Arizona climate. Measuring the output and the water consumption, he claims those methods are sorely inadequate, at least in his climate.