Is there a cheap DIY method for some sort of solar-based sea

Im guessing the water wouldn't be best quality. Distilling would require lots of power. Pushing water through a membrane isn't very cheap.

Do you mean purify like physically removing contaminants or killing bacteria and other things that will get you sick? If the latter take a clear glass jug and leave it in the sun for 6 hours and the sun will disinfect the water for you.

Where will be your boat? Ocean or lake? If a lake it will be very easy to purify the water. If in the ocean taking salt out is hard.

>>996253
>>996250
Mainly concerned with desalination and basic filtration.

Any way to use solar power? I'm really new to this kind of stuff.

>>996254
Yeah, ocean port.

>>996256

I dont think you can cut corner with desalination. You need to pump water at high pressure through a membrane to get clean water. Maybe use a Katadyn water maker (PowerSurvivor40E) hooked up to solar?

>>996258
Hm I could look into that, could coupled with collection of rain water save me a good bit.

Do any of you have any experience with converting boats to be lived on? Any tips?

>>996258
You can make a solar still, but it won't produce water at a fast enough rate at a size that will fit on your boat. I'm taking less than a cup of water a day.

Desalination takes a lot of power, but with a fairly serious set of solar panels you can run a reverse osmosis filter and get enough water to drink.

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Solar desalination.

Just drink the water and piss it out and it wont be salty

>>996253
>If the latter take a clear glass jug and leave it in the sun for 6 hours and the sun will disinfect the water for you.
"No"

To get the salt out you can use a solar still, but they don't produce much. I'd either say bring a diqload of water with you or invest in a solar charged reverse osmosis purifier.

>>996274
This op. Also carry some minerals in powderform and put it in the water you destilled with that method to ensure your body gets enough sweet calcium, natrium and magnesium

>>996274
The process can be accelerated by increasing the surface area of the water that's exposed to the air. Easy way to do that is to put some sponges in the bowl.

>>996248
so the only thing I can think of that seems useful is trying to copy the aquamate design.
>>996263
is right, because space is short on boats, and you want something as close to water level as possible so you don't have to pump water to fill it.
>>996274
this won't work very well, I'd be worried about splashes contaminating the end product.
>>996780
yep. you want a very shallow tray that gets refilled. a small hole in the bottom of your inflatable craft will do that, the smaller the better, and adjust weights on the inflatable so that the water level is where you want it. mostly will not let out water that is heated because hot water rises.
second thought, you may want to insulate the bottom of the solar raft.
So I'm thinking a couple of inner tubes caulked to a sheet of foam insulation covered with black rubber, a hole drilled into the middle of each inner tube, and a clear tent hanging from a pole in the middle of the tubes. the base of the tent is anchored to the side of cut open pvc pipe that is bent into a trough. one side of the trough goes to your opaque but light colored reservoir.
It may not be the best design @ storage, something that is totally inflatable/has no rigid bottom may work better for you.

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It is easy as fuck to make a distilling device. Heat radiation from the sun is all that is needed. if you're doing it proper, it will only require you to fill water into the boiler and water into the cooler and rest is automatic.

basic sketch but you get the idea..

>>997043
you can also make an oven using the same kinda sun reflector thingy with a pot inside. cover with plexiglass or something to trap the heat inside you fool. both with the distillation device and the oven.

>>997043
The problem is that boiling water takes a large amount of energy. You can definitely make a solar oven by focusing sunlight with lenses or mirrors, but using it to distil water will be very slow.

Assuming perfect conditions (and alignment) you get about 1000W of solar energy per m2.

Unfortunately solar ovens are only about 15% efficient at directing that energy into what they're heating. So you get a maximum of about 150W/m2 for a few hours if you're tracking the sun on a cloudless day.

It takes about 600Wh to boil one liter of water (assuming it doesn't lose heat to the environment, which it will) so the theoretical maximum amount of water you'll get out of your solar distiller is about 250mL/hr/m2, but in practice it will be far less.

Reverse osmosis filtering is far less costly in terms of energy, since the water does not need to be heated.

Water is cheap. It is nonsense to try to cut costs there, look elsewhere. A distillation rig is unnecessary unless you plan to never land for extended periods of time.

>>997212
Seems like water recycling like the space station does is more efficient, if you don't mind drinking your own urine and fecal runoff.

>>997281
The space station actually has a lot of electricity - its solar panels are more effective than terrestrial arrays since the sunlight is not attenuated by the atmosphere.

Since you will be in a humid area why worry about evaporating water just to condense it back down. You could just hook a solar panel up to a dehumidifier and drink the collected water. Or you could build an Absorption cycle style apparatus with a heat exchanger below the waterline and a solar evaporator.

>>996486
Maybe not 6 hours reliably, but the longer it's in the sun the more safe it gets. There are charts and data about it. Solar UV even kills e-coli and all that bad stuff. The water has to be very clear though, as does the thin container. And the water can't be too deep (bottle can't be too big). Certain plastics actually work better than glass. I spent a whole semester in a class dicking around with water purification. I think for well water, a bio-sand filter + a bamboo charcoal filter + solar sterilization is the cheapest, most sustainable combo. Doesn't work for salt though.

>>997376
dont forget the reflector. they've done studies with PET 500ml bottles with label taken off on tin roofing reflector in Africa, disinfected in about 6 hrs.

>>996248
how big is your boat anon?

>>997376
UV can be used to kill anything nasty in the water

As a marine electrician with a few years under my belt and working on... Well, Let's just say I can't exactly go into heavy detail on what I'm doing on threat of prison, I've worked hand in hand with several craft at the facility where I'm at.

The military procedure for water desalinization water is as such.

1. They generally don't.

Desalinization is hard. Rather, they treat sewage and reuse that instead. It's less hard on the equipment to do so, and takes less power.

Not sure if that is a viable solution for you depending on your holding tanks, but it shouldn't be much to take your sewage disposal and modify for it to treat instead of disperse.

Of course, I may be unaware of how a smaller craft handles it's sewage since that's not what I'm assigned to work on. It may just treat the water to a degree to prevent biological damage and then disperse into the sea.

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This is a setup you could use OP.
Get yourself a fresnell lens (the oval)
A mirror.
And a glass box with a black bottom.
Make sure the focal point is on the black bottom by using the mirror.
Put salt water in the left compartment of the box.
Water evaporates due to the heat of the sun and the focused light from the lens.
Water hits the roof of the box and condenses.
Droplets of water are getting to the right side due to gravity.
The slowly fill up the right compartment (Hole to drain the liquid to a tank or something else).
After a while the left compartment is empty except for some salt.
Remove the salt and add new water (top of the box should be detachable.
If you want it to be more efficient you could add aluminum to the lateral sides to make it a bit better.
PROS:
Cheap
No conversion to electric energy
Easy to make.
CONS:
Water still needs purification.
During the day the sun moves and you need to move the lens.
You'll only get some water to drink.
Not enough to cook with or whatever you want to do with it.

>>997680
The lens issue can be solved by using a system dedicated to tracking the sun.

You could use a Photocell/diode and have the system set up with a solenoid and design this to track the sun to keep the diode/cell at 100% exposure, thus automating and ensuring the process works as efficiently as possible.

I'm certain you could repurpose a system designed for solar panels to do this, with the only change being the mounted panel is moving a mirror rather than the solar panel it would typically use.

>>997680
See
>>997065

Photovoltaic panels can actually be up to 30% efficient.

>>997285
They also don't lose nearly as much water, since it's a sealed system.

What kind of boat is it? If it has an engine you are producing a lot of waste heat that could be used for a distillation setup. Inboard engines typically already have a water jacketed exhaust. The cooling water is just expelled into the surrounding water. The temperature of this water would never get close to boiling as that is not the purpose of the system. But a separate closed system may be able to create adequate temperatures to boil water.

>>997947
If OP is living on a small boat then most likely it's either close to shore, or it's a sail boat. If he's close to shore he shouldn't need desalination so I'm assuming it's a sail boat. Even if it does have a motor it's not worth the fuel to run it just for heating water.

Now I could be wrong, maybe OP has a yacht, taking water from the cooling jacket is definitely an interesting idea. However, if OP does have motors on his boat then he probably also has an alternator and can use electricity to run an reverse osmosis desalination system.

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Get a ton of these

>>997976
I suppose if you were stationary on calm water you could use a bunch of inflatable rafts as solar stills. It's an idea. Probably not as practical as a solar set up and a commercial desalination device, but it works in theory.

>>997983
I'm surprised no one sells an inflatable solar still. There's be a market for it even if it sucked.

>>997989
Anyone bored enough to do a patent search?

>>996248
you could boil the seawater and extract the vapor, then reboil the vapor and run it through a UV Filtration system but by the time you've fucked around doing all that you might as well have just bought yourself a filtration unit.

>>998603
or you could just buy your water in bulk containers, get them in 1 gallon or 5 gallon bottles like they use for water machines in receptions and office blocks and just have done with it

>>997983
They exist and are standard on a lot of nice life boats.

>>996248
I was thinking of doing this since I was growing concerned about the California drought. The problem is, is that distillery equipment is illegal to own without extensive licensing fees.

>>1000045
Reverse osmosis desalination systems are not restricted like distillery equipment and are more cost effective once you account for power usage.

>>996248
Solar panels -> RO seems like the obvious solution.