Gizmodo: water purifier

What Is This?

John Herrman — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:40:00 EDT

An escaped amusement park water ride boat? A crashed, insectoid UFO that's stuck struggling on its back, turtle-style? A conveniently all-powerful plot device in a Hollywood summer action movie? A Roomba grain harvester?

This 15-foot-wide, solar-panel-adorned disc is a floating water purifier, to be plopped into the canals in the Japanese city of Osaka, and into the moat around the city's centerpiece castle. Designed by NTT, these "floating UFOs" can filter about 2400 gallons of water in the 6 hours a day they'll be operational, all the while spewing the newly cleaned and oxygenated water out of a little spout in its back, presumably because these things have the potential to be kind of unsettling, and everything with a blowhole is automatically charming. It's true! Check!

At night they'll just sort of float along, creepily. They've got batteries for when the sun hides out, but only to power a rack of glowing LED lights. [Asahi via Pink Tentacle—Second image from Mainichi Daily]

Sulis Personal Water Purifier: A Bottle-Top Device That Could Save Lives

www.gizmodo.com — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:26:14 EDT

We've already written about the LifeStraw, a product that could save the lives of the 1.5 million under-fives who die each year from drinking untreated water, and here's another. Developed by an Israeli company called Water Sheer, the Sulis personal water purifier (named after the Roman goddess of spring water) is a 2.7-inch, 10-gram device which you attach to the top of a bottle of water to drink through.

As well as helping people in the developing world, the device, which can purify water tainted by organic, biological, and chemical contaminates, is also aimed at hikers, victims of natural disasters, and the military. The company is looking for investors in order to build a manufacturing plant and start production, but they say the device, which is good for purifying 1,000 liters of water and, unlike other purifying devices makes the water taste like, well, fresh water, will cost no more than a "large coffee and cake at Starbucks". – Ad Dugdale

Product Page [Watersheer via MedGadget]

SteriPEN UV Water Purifier

Jason Chen — Tue, 30 May 2006 07:30:07 EDT

Ever find yourself in [undefined country] and run out of bottled water to drink? Use the SteriPEN Water Purifier to kill bacteria, viruses and protozoa without using chemicals or boiling. Simply stir for less than a minute and the water's safe to drink.

We wonder how the [undefined country residents] can drink their water every day. They must have guts of steel. Damn [undefined country residents]. – Jason Chen

SteriPEN [Magellan's via Shiny Shiny]

LifeStraw - $2 Saves a Life

johnb — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 10:31:15 EDT

Mike over at GizMag.com pointed out this interesting device. It's a water purifier that costs about $2 and lasts about one year. There are no replaceable or electric parts and it uses simple suction to filter out most major pathogens. Over 6,000 people, mostly children, die of water-borne diseases each day. The LifeStraw, quite clearly, can help. Mike says:

If we (as in the big WE) can find a way of manufacturing and distributing one of these to each human at risk, every year, we could save countless lives (now there s a noble outcome for the tech blogs and mags of the world to work together to promote this). Each LifeStraw lasts for one person s annual needs of clean water a simple straw costing a few dollars will ensure that one at-risk person will not die for a year - now that's a donation we can all make with a serious kicker!

Not to get all Suzanne Sommers here, but this product, like the excellently named Plumpy'nut, is an great way to solve a burgeoning, if not already massive, problem. Now back to your regularly scheduled poop jokes.

The LifeStraw the invention of the century? [GizMag]