Dean Kamen (Segway Inventor) Solves the World's Water Problems | Hacker News Reader

Dean Kamen (Segway Inventor) Solves the World's Water Problems

blog.wired.com

42 pointsprakash30 comments

Somehow, I think the title of the article is a little overblown. I grew up in Central America, and having had Amoebic Dysentery twice as a child, I know something about bad water. :)

Part of the problem is getting the water clean, but another big part of the problem is getting it to the people that are using it. Growing up, I lived in a city of 1.5 million people that had a water treatment program. The problem was water delivery. We lived in a heavy seismic zone, and the water pipes were plastic and the sewage pipes were clay. So, there were a number of cracks in both, and seepage went from the sewage systems to the delivery systems. So, water treatment was needed at the kitchen faucet not at the village center.

Another issue is that people need to realize that the water makes them sick. In many rural villages, you don't really think about water making people sick. They just think that getting really bad cases of diarrhea is part of life, and they think that people just die young. They don't correlate bad water with dying. They really need education systems for that.

Also, systems are needed that are a lot cheaper than $1000-2000. In many countries people make about $1 a day. It's going to take a lot of people that realize that the water is making them sick before they buy something that expensive.

Well I think the point is that it is small enough that you can place the purifier on the other end of the pipe (in the home) and so what contaminates the water on its way there isn't as much a problem. But then again like you said, even at $1000 it's more than an individual living there will afford. Maybe they will institute some sort of program where people can donate purifiers to villages?

You're right that it will take a lot of education, but the point is that at $1000-$2000 range it is financially viable to add these to each village. If the average wage is $1 a day and a village has 100 people living in it, you just need to prevent 10 sick days per person (and I'm not even counting the people dying there) for the investment to pay-off. Apply some microlending to it and that's it.

Whether the Slingshot is a holy grail in providing clean water to the poor in the world's developing countries, its possible future impact is larger than its own achievements. The press it gathers will attract more attention from engineers, funding providers, and the general population. The more smart people we have working on this problem, the more likely we are to achieve a feasible solution and solve one of the greatest problems facing the world's poor. I applaud Dean Kamen for his work to-date and for putting the clean water problem in the spotlight.

Sure... but where does the waste go? How do you clean this 'magical' machine? How do you dispose of the potentially highly toxic substances that were in the water?

Bury it in a hole in the ground... heck, you could even dump it back in the same water source it came from and filter it again :)

The question of waste byproducts is a good one, and I haven't seen it addressed anywhere.

Calling the machine 'magical' (with scare-quotes) is disingenuous though. Any revolutionary technology could be described that way. As the saying goes, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The proof is in the pudding.

(Ok, enough pithy quotations for today.)

Dean Kamen has done a lot of good for man kind. Both in terms of inventions and education. We need more entrepreneurs like him.

Solving the water problem will enrich the lives of more people than we can fathom. If Kamen's device does what he says it will do, he deserves to go down in history with Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, and John Browning.

Do you have a thing for guns?

Anyway, don't forget Norman Borlaug and Ingvar Kamprad.

It's more that I come from a family of mechanical engineers, rather than an ag-tech background.

The Segway may not have changed the world, but the technology was also used for one killer wheelchair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBOT

Anyone know how this compares ($/life saved, or some other reasonable metric) to commonly-used water purification methods?

Just like he solved the worlds walking problems!

If you can get this at a production cost in the $1000-$2000 range as the site says, then the impact of this thing will be much, much larger than the Segway.

Still, I think the guy should be applauded. There are still really important issues that need to be addressed, and he is working on them.

I wish that we the people could take 1% of the wealth away from investment banks and give everyone food and water.

Interesting, this went from 3 points to -1 points. Why do you think this is a bad idea?

I don't have the ability to downmod but my guess would be that it doesn't address anything in the article or add anything useful to the discussion.

That wouldn't solve their problems in long run. Only just enough until grub runs out again. Then you're back to square one.

Still doesn't work in a drought.

It is a joke, right? If you can purify urine with something like that, all you'd need is to get users "contributing" to the system.

Not a joke in the slightest. It is a distiller, so clean water boils off and is collected, separated from any contaminants.

Yeah, I know. But most of the problems that poorer nations face are not related with complete lack of water, but with the lack of drinkable water. The droughts you mentioned are oftentimes the same.

I really don't think there is a lack of water. Just lack of drinkable water. Unless you are in the middle of Sahara, you should be able to find all kinds of water sources.

There's also lack of energy... do all the distillers come with free solar panels? Otherwise you need to have fuel.

That's why the article refers to the Stirling engines as a potentially partner - you chuck your cow dung or whatever into the Stirling to generate the heat needed to distill the water

Not only that, you get electricity out of the engine as well. The waste heat from the electric generator is used to power the water purifier.

The numbers in the article suggest the stirling engine needs 1kW of energy input. There is no need to use expensive photovoltaic panels. 1kW is about 1 square meter of mirrors in a solar concentrator on a sunny day at many latitudes. Solar concentrators and stirling engines pair nicely, though there may be issues at that small scale. Nothing more mirrors won't fix though.

Someone forward this to Atlanta, GA...

The Segway kinda sucked, but still, you gotta be a real genius to think up and design something that sucks in just that kind of way. I'm glad he's working on something so fundamental. We need more like this. Even if Segway is a little lame.

In fact this is particularly well suited too Dean, because even if the design is lamer then segway polo if the science and engineering are right, it's a worldchanger.

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