Dean Kamen’s Slingshot water purifier and Stirling generator technology - Finally, low cost water and power for the developing world!
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| Dean Kamen with water purifier & power generator |
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Dean Kamen has unveiled his latest power and water package intended for the third world. The two components are a water purifier called Slingshot that uses a fraction of the power of alternatives and a Stirling engine based power generator that works on cow dung. The $1500 water purifier will produce 1000 liters of water a day, while the $3,700 generator produces around 1 kW, which is enough to deliver light to a small village. The two products have been in development for years, but it looks as though they are now ready for more prime time consideration.
It’s amazing that in this day and age, when investment bankers routinely take home $50 million paychecks, we can’t seem to work out how to help the majority of people on this planet from being at risk through lack of water and power.
Inventor Dean Kamen wants to put entrepreneurs to work bringing water and electricity to the world's poor.
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- It is designed to supply a village with 1,000 liters/day of clean water. (Colbert Report)
- You can use any water source -- ocean, puddle, chemical waste site, hexavalent chrome, arsenic, poison, 50 gallon drum of urine.
- There are no filters to replace, no charcoal, no anything disposable (just distillation).
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The Slingshot can use half the waste heat (450 watts) from a sterling engine electrical generator (prototype also being designed by Kamen's company) to boil its water. (TED)
Later sources say the sterling engine can generate 1 kilowatt or enough power for 70 high-efficiency light bulbs.
The sterling engine can run on anything that burns, propane or even cow dung.
The slingshot is a David and Goliath reference aimed at putting water and power back in the hands of individuals.
Slingshot will weigh less then 60 lbs. (TED)
The prototype slingshot was hand-built for $100K. The goal is to get production units down to $1,000 to $2,000. (CNN)
The sterling engine, used as an electrical generator, can produce about 200 watts of power (it will never be more then 20 percent efficient) and 800 watts of waste heat (the waste heat that slingshot uses). TED.
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| Stirling Engine for TH!NK? |
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| Dean Kamen has spent over $40 million in the last decade developing stirling engines which convert heat directly into mechanical energy by use of an expanding and contracting gas inside a cylinder. More
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