Water Purifier

This invention could save millions of people

It's estimated that eighty percent of all diseases you can name can be wiped out if people have clean water.  Currently, an estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water. Kamen has invented a low-power, portable water purifier that could save millions of people from shortages of fresh water.

Using wasted heat

What the purifier does is simple.  A few years ago, Kamen was working on an electric generator for underdeveloped villages when he noticed that it produced wasted heat.  He decided to try to use that heat to make clean water.  The result is a purifier that uses the extra heat to distill water; boil it and condense it.

Low maintenance

The low-power, portable purifier requires little maintenance and uses no chemicals or filters.  The purifier will cost around $1,000 to manufacture and makes 10 gallons of fresh drinking water an hour. It uses a special distillation and condensation process and works hand-in-hand with a generator he's also developed. 

The two machines; the purifier and the generator are each about the size of a washing machine and together can provide much-needed power and clean water in rural villages.

Just add water

The invention's approach has the convenience of simplicity: all you have to do is add water, any water, even raw sewage to the purifier.  Then the purifier's distillation process works by taking in the contaminated water and separating out the clean water by vaporizing it.  The purifier then shoots the remaining sludge out of a plastic tube. 

Distribution is key

Designed to be used in Third World countries, this purifier may be simple to use, but Kamen admits marketing it to the people who need it is the hard part.  Kamen figures major health organizations probably won't buy into unproved technology, so he's taking the purifier on the road. 

He's exploring distribution strategies for the purifier in Bangladesh.  He's working the numbers to see if the machines can be produced economically by a factory there.  If it works out, he thinks distributing them in a decentralized fashion will be good business. 

Kamen realizes he has little credibility with Third World countries so he has a lot to prove.  But so much is at stake.  If Kamen can get the purifiers to the people who need them, millions of lives can be saved.