Water shortage

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Coleridge, 1798

But, the solution already exists!

• The Slingshot’s advanced Stirling Engine can run on any combustible product, propane or ...even cow dung (Wired)


• The Stirling Engine, which is still considered a mystery to most engineers, can generate 1 kilowatt, or enough electricity to light 70 efficiency light bulbs according to Wired, and can be used as an electrical generator producing 200 watts of electricity and 800 watts of waste heat (TED)


• The Slingshot weighs less than 60 pounds (TED) and is smaller than a portable washing machine (Wired)


• The Slingshot uses vapor compression distillation to completely remove pure water from any “wet substance” (Wired) using just 2% of the power of anything that is currently in production


• The Slingshot can produce 1,000 liters of fresh water per day


• The heat from the purified water is recovered with a “counter-flow heat exchange” process and recycled to the next batch of water (TED)


• There are no filters on the Slingshot to replace, no carbon filtration system, no fluoride or chlorine necessary, and no ion extraction process is utilized (Wired)


• The Slingshot can use any water source available, safely: the ocean, bio-hazardous water sources, lakes, chemical waste dumps, removing everything from arsenic, hexavalent chrome, poison, heavy metals, etc.



The Slingshot is one of those once-in-a-lifetime inventions that truly can save the world. It takes any contaminated source of water, even pure raw sewage, and blasts the water out of the source by vaporizing it, extracting it, and storing it. The contents that have been extracted from the water is deposited in a separate bin and can even be used as a combustible to power the engine!

My favorite quote of Kamen’s is the following, “Not required are engineers, pipelines, epidemiologists, or microbiologists. You don’t need any -ologists. You don’t need any building permits, bribery, or buræucracies.” Sounds like my kinda guy...

Kamen says that the prototype device is hand-machined at a cost of $100,000 - however, his goal is through mass production to lower the cost to $1,000 per unit.

Kamen named the Slingshot in reference to the duel between the biblical characters of David and Goliath, putting the power back into the hands of the little guy through the use of a small piece of technology, a slingshot.

Once a fluid has passed through this device it’s actually pure, distilled water. Any bottled water that you can buy off-the-shelf has far more minerals and other contaminates than you’ll find in this clean liquid-gold. It really doesn’t matter what the input source was, the export is pure, clean water. Generally, water is taken from its source, then chlorine along with other chemicals are added to disinfect it to make it biologically inactive. When these units are a thousand dollars a pop, sign me up. I’d prefer the water processed by this machine to anything I’m drawing from my faucet, and nuts to paying three dollars a liter for off-the-shelf bottled water that’s nowhere near as clean!

And all diseases could be better and easier cured, IF the water is pure!






Barcelona forced to import emergency water

· Southern regions say move politically biased
· Catalonia's reservoirs three-quarters empty

Graham Keeley in Barcelona The Guardian, Wednesday May 14 2008 Article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/14/spain.water


The tanker Sichem Defender arrived at the port of Barcelona yesterday carrying something far more precious than its usual cargo of chemicals.

Nearly 23m litres of drinking water - enough for 180,000 people for a day - was the first delivery in an unprecedented emergency plan to help this parched corner of Spain ahead of the holiday season.

As the country suffers its worst drought since records began 60 years ago, Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital, has been the worst-hit region. After months without adequate rainfall its reservoirs are down to just over a quarter of normal capacity. A year ago they stood at almost double that.

Nationally, reservoirs are around half full with the worst of the summer heat just a few weeks away.

If levels drop to 15% of normal supply the water in the reservoirs is no longer deemed fit for drinking and restrictions on tap water would have to be brought in.

The tanker, which arrived in Barcelona from nearby Tarragona, will be followed by its sister ship Contester Defender tomorrow from Marseille.

At a cost of €22m (£17.5m), six shiploads are to arrive each month for three months, from Tarragona in southern Catalonia, Marseille and Almeria - one of the driest areas of southern Spain.

Already Barcelona's authorities have turned off civic fountains and beachside showers, brought in hosepipe bans, and banned the filling of swimming pools. Schoolchildren are being taught how to save water.

"We are only too aware of the crisis with the water as they have been giving my daughters classes for months on how to save water and only to use what they need," said city resident Begoña Gómez, 43, as she sipped a glass of bottled water. "But we need better management of water by the government."

As the reservoirs across Spain run dry, a "water war" has broken out, with different regions scrabbling for extra supplies.

The Socialist government, which initially opposed water transfers from one region to another, executed a political U-turn and allowed water to be pumped into Catalonia from the river Ebro in the neighbouring region of Aragon.

The move infuriated southern regions such as Murcia and Valencia, which asked for similar concessions. Both are significant agricultural areas, with a busy tourist season about to start, and expect their water supplies to be hit hard.

Both areas, run by the opposition conservative Popular party, claim Spain's Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodrìguez Zapatero denied their requests for water transfers for political reasons.

The Socialist government is following a controversial programme of building desalinisation plants, which they claim will provide a long-term solution to Spain's endemic water shortage. They have built six so far and plan a further 18. One is due to open outside Barcelona in May next year.

Meanwhile, despite heavy rainfall over the weekend water reserves in Catalonia only increased by 1.7%.

Water experts say Barcelona's problems are not just down to low rainfall. They claim an antiquated, leaky drainage system loses millions of litres of water a day throughout Spain. Within metres of the new €130m headquarters of Agbar, which owns Aguas de Barcelona, the city's water utility, one faulty system was reported to be losing 800,000 litres a day.

Ramón Llamas, a water expert at Madrid University, says Spain squanders its water and needs better soil management, adding that despite having one of the lowest amounts of rainfall in western Europe, it has one of the highest levels of water consumption a head: the average person in Madrid uses 140 litres a day.

Meanwhile, despite fears taps would run dry this summer in Barcelona, the arrival of water tankers did not please everyone.

Miguel Angel Fraile, secretary general of the Catalan Commercial Confederation, said: "The arrival of a water ship is the image and expression of failure which neither Barcelona nor Catalonia deserves."

And others doubted whether emergency measures were necessary. Carlos Urquiaga, 36, manager of La Tramoia restaurant, said: "No one here asks for water from the tap because the taste in Barcelona is so bad. We always serve bottled water and everyone buys it for their homes."

Who exports where
Hydrologists expect the demand for water will continue to increase with the world's growing population. Some predict that by 2025, 3.5 billion people will be living in water-scarce countries, compared with 500 million in 2002.

· Turkey exports water to Israel and plans to ship more to Syria, Jordan and Greece

· France sends tankers filled with millions of gallons of water to Algeria

· Russia, New Zealand, Norway and Scotland have all considered exporting water

· Malaysia provides most of Singapore's water

· Islands in the Caribbean ship water by tanker to help with shortages

· A plan by Canada to ship 1m gallons of water a day to the Middle East was dropped after protests by environmentalists