A slow sand filter requires water that is not salty. A desalination device serves a different purpose.
I know off of the top of my head how to make a very basic solar still.
The device in the article is a slightly less basic solar still.
Are you an expert in the field of desalination?
Are you sure that a sand filter is a good tool for desalination?
> are you an expert
Appeal to authority is not an argument
Agreed, but it might indicate us wether we should take the answer with a …pinch of salt.
I think I need to be more long form because people are getting the wrong idea. Desalination from seawater is almost never required, brackish sources are more common. For this multistage flash distillation is the cheapest option, reverse osmosis next. Even then most people could recycle grey water rather than run desalination. A sand filter works for this.
These types of gizmo based approaches just strike me as incredibly naive as to the underlying causes of problems with water supply. More than naive, patronising. People in poor countries aren't stupid.
+1. Reminds me of Gandhi proposing that Indian households "solve" the problem of importing clothing by spinning their own cloth at home, which is ridiculously impractical compared to letting factories do an incredibly tedious and time-consuming job.
I don't expect this to work in areas were typically desalination is used, since there is no freshwater available there.