A bright red shipping container...Solar panels on the roof power [it] and two faucets dispense free purified drinking water to anyone who wants it...the container is meant to be a kind of "downtown in a box": a web-connected bodega-cum-community center that can be dropped into underdeveloped villages all over the world. Coke calls it an Ekocenter.
Inside the big red box sits a smaller one, about the size of a dorm fridge...Using a process called vapor compression distillation, a single [one] can purify more than 250,000 liters of water per year, enough to satisfy the needs of about 300 people... [Their design incorporates] a "counterflow heat exchanger" that would run cool incoming liquid past superheated distilled water that had been vaporized and compressed.
The question was how to get the purifiers mass-produced and into the hands of those who needed them...
The medical and pharmaceutical companies Kamen had worked with over the years weren't much better positioned to help. They had infrastructure in developed nations but not in the 100-odd countries where he hoped to see the technology deployed.
Frustrated, Kamen had another obvious-in-retrospect insight. 'If there's one thing you can buy anywhere in the world, it's a Coke.' ...Coke is something you drink, and they have coolers that are about the size of our machine, and they have bottling partnerships around the world.
Inside the big red box sits a smaller one, about the size of a dorm fridge...Using a process called vapor compression distillation, a single [one] can purify more than 250,000 liters of water per year, enough to satisfy the needs of about 300 people... [Their design incorporates] a "counterflow heat exchanger" that would run cool incoming liquid past superheated distilled water that had been vaporized and compressed.
The question was how to get the purifiers mass-produced and into the hands of those who needed them...
The medical and pharmaceutical companies Kamen had worked with over the years weren't much better positioned to help. They had infrastructure in developed nations but not in the 100-odd countries where he hoped to see the technology deployed.
Frustrated, Kamen had another obvious-in-retrospect insight. 'If there's one thing you can buy anywhere in the world, it's a Coke.' ...Coke is something you drink, and they have coolers that are about the size of our machine, and they have bottling partnerships around the world.
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/slingshot-inventor-dean-kamens-revolutionary-clean-water-machine#TCCC
What about maintenance?
For the first manufacturing run of 50 Slingshot machines, Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back.
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/08/features/engine-of-progress
"Almost every project we do starts out with most people thinking we are nuts." Yet he's made an enviable career out of proving such doubters wrong...in the next few weeks, Kamen's device -- named the Slingshot -- will begin shipping to Paraguay, South Africa and Mexico...The statistics of the global water problem are startling: 783 million people around the world don't have access to clean water... In the late 80s, he and the engineers at DEKA had been approached by Baxter Healthcare to develop a portable device that would let kidney patients treat themselves at home, cleaning their blood using a technique called peritoneal dialysis...But distillation also requires water to evaporate into steam before then condensing back into a liquid, and Kamen wanted to do it at a rate of ten litres an hour. "It turns out it would take 25kW of continuous input power," he says. "Your electric bill would be $50 a night." Instead, Kamen realised that, if he could recover the energy usually lost as radiated heat when the steam condensed back into water, he could use it to help warm more cold water as it entered the system, drastically reducing the amount of power the system required...He recognised that the machine could remove contaminants from water and purify it. In seeking an improvement to a medical practice necessary for a few thousand people worldwide, he realised he may have stumbled upon a way of saving millions of lives...Coca-Cola -- with its web of international bottling franchises bringing their products to every country on Earth (with the exception of North Korea and Iran), and a distribution network that enabled them to deliver bottles of Coke into the most remote communities -- might be the one organisation that could help him with Slingshot. "To me, Coca-Cola is not a soft-drinks company. Coca-Cola is the largest, most efficient logistics operation ever put on this planet," Kamen says. "...and the poorest people in the world get access to it."...Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back to DEKA. He expects they'll require no expert maintenance for as long as five years...DEKA project for Coke, the company intends to make this first generation of Slingshots a core element of its EKOCENTER plan, in which full-size shipping containers -- outfitted with a shop, a water machine, solar power, a phone-charging station, TV and an internet connection -- will provide what he calls a "downtown in a box" in even the most remote communities.
What about maintenance?
For the first manufacturing run of 50 Slingshot machines, Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back.
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/08/features/engine-of-progress
"Almost every project we do starts out with most people thinking we are nuts." Yet he's made an enviable career out of proving such doubters wrong...in the next few weeks, Kamen's device -- named the Slingshot -- will begin shipping to Paraguay, South Africa and Mexico...The statistics of the global water problem are startling: 783 million people around the world don't have access to clean water... In the late 80s, he and the engineers at DEKA had been approached by Baxter Healthcare to develop a portable device that would let kidney patients treat themselves at home, cleaning their blood using a technique called peritoneal dialysis...But distillation also requires water to evaporate into steam before then condensing back into a liquid, and Kamen wanted to do it at a rate of ten litres an hour. "It turns out it would take 25kW of continuous input power," he says. "Your electric bill would be $50 a night." Instead, Kamen realised that, if he could recover the energy usually lost as radiated heat when the steam condensed back into water, he could use it to help warm more cold water as it entered the system, drastically reducing the amount of power the system required...He recognised that the machine could remove contaminants from water and purify it. In seeking an improvement to a medical practice necessary for a few thousand people worldwide, he realised he may have stumbled upon a way of saving millions of lives...Coca-Cola -- with its web of international bottling franchises bringing their products to every country on Earth (with the exception of North Korea and Iran), and a distribution network that enabled them to deliver bottles of Coke into the most remote communities -- might be the one organisation that could help him with Slingshot. "To me, Coca-Cola is not a soft-drinks company. Coca-Cola is the largest, most efficient logistics operation ever put on this planet," Kamen says. "...and the poorest people in the world get access to it."...Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back to DEKA. He expects they'll require no expert maintenance for as long as five years...DEKA project for Coke, the company intends to make this first generation of Slingshots a core element of its EKOCENTER plan, in which full-size shipping containers -- outfitted with a shop, a water machine, solar power, a phone-charging station, TV and an internet connection -- will provide what he calls a "downtown in a box" in even the most remote communities.
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