Howto Survival

How do you make pure drinking water using only a piece of aluminum?

<embed> https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/15/1960859/-How-do-you-make-pure-drinking-water-using-only-a-piece-of-aluminum?utm_campaign=trending </embed> DailyKos 7/15/2020

Published July 13 in Nature Sustainability, they took a simple piece of cheapo aluminum, and with some quick laser etching turned it into a super-wicking, super-light-absorbing, super-water-evaporating surface that provides easy water purification, using only light from the Sun.  I mean, they hit the trifecta.

Solar-trackable super-wicking black metal panel for photothermal water sanitation

<embed> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0566-x#citeas </embed> 7/13/2020 Nature

Solar-based water sanitation is an environmentally friendly process for obtaining clean water that requires efficient light-to-heat-to-vapour generation. Solar-driven interfacial evaporation has potential, but the inability to control interfacial evaporators for solar tracking limits efficiency at large solar zenith angles and when using optical concentration. Furthermore, clogging affects the efficiency of the device. Here, we create a super-wicking and super-light-absorbing (SWSA) aluminium surface for efficient solar-based water sanitation. The measured evaporation rate exceeds that of an ideal device operating at 100% efficiency, which we hypothesize resulted from a reduced enthalpy of vaporization within the microcapillaries.