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"Lifesaver Bottle" Filters Viruses Out of Water
gihan_ripper writes "British inventor Michael Pritchard has developed a small self-contained filter system that instantly cleans water, removing all particles larger than 15nm. He said that he was inspired after seeing the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004; people had to wait for many days to get fresh water and many died from drinking contaminated water. The filter is so effective that it can purify dirty river water and even fecal matter. His bottle will shortly be available for sale from Lifesaver Systems at an expected cost of £190 (approx. $385)."
This sounds like what was in Dune... A rehydrator from excrement (sweat, fecal matter, urine).
If anything, along with rebreathers and this rehydrator, one could stay in horrendously inhospitable areas for a long while.
Fantastic idea, except for the fact that anyone in the path of Katrina who could have afforded a $385 water bottle could have afforded a $90 plane ticket, $35 bus ride, or $27 tank of gas.
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No shit!
Pee is not toxic. So, unless you rather wait for a good tasting liquid than survive, there is no problem.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
He can't just pull the raw materials and equipment to make these out of his butt, dipshit. Those have a non-zero cost, and for a superfine filter like he's making the cost of production must be non-trivial.
It it sees widespread production, the cost will go down (economies of scale) and advances in materials science and manufacturing techniques could also get the price down. Eventually.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Is there one for Windows?
It removes all particles larger than 15 nm, but chemical bond lengths are typically 0.2 nm, so this bottle will not filter small molecules such as Urea.
May the Maths Be with you!
More than one year ago, BBC mentioned the LifeStraw that filters water as you drink. It's able to filter 700 litres of water and was at that time priced at less than two quid (probably the wholesale price). See also the inventor Torben Vestergaard Frandsen's website.
Unselfish actions pay back better
If this can deliver 4,000 liters at under $1 a liter, and is shipped empty, it's cheaper than shipping pallets of bottled water for military and aid organizations. And when mass production hits, I can see this becoming popular with campers, tourists, business travellers and others.
And on that subject, jackasses like this are why it's hard to help anyone:
Of course, if "there is decent water resource management in the country" in the first place, none of this would be necessary. And never mind that if I'd have to make a trek for water anyway, I'd prefer it to be clean when I got there.
If the LifeStraw at $3.00 will actually hurt women and girls and not solve the rest of society's ills, I can only imagine what Mr. Hetherington would think about a model that cost 100x more.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's been possible to buy similar "virus level" filters for hiking since at least the 80s. The typical problems are cleaning, and clogging. See Katadyn or your local REI for a variety of samples. Then there's the "$2" (really about $7) LifeStraw, that was advertised on gizmodo 2 years ago... is this just a running theme?
If the filter is small enough to block viruses, then it is so small that even very small 1u particles will clog it. The whole filter system has to be optimized... and they still clog. They claim 1000 liters, but I'm not really buying it. If it really has something to do with distilling, then I'd be more positive, but that's usually pretty darn complex.
Perhaps he's using a teflon reverse osmosis filter? At the price, it's certainly possible. Those take significant pressure, but they would take out viruses. The water has to start pretty clean too or they develop a film which clogs them too. People have tried iodine on them as well... it works for a while. Whithout knowing what this thing is (and the website's no help), I don't think we can really talk coherently about it.
If it is just a filter you can reverse flush and clean and do a variety of other things, but if your filter clogs after a few liters you'll be _very_ unhappy. This is made more difficult by the fact that you're trying to clean out biologicals, which will happily grow in the filter so it clogs up even quicker, and the cleaning is even more important and difficult to do completely. That's why people make throw aways or just add a halogen (chlorene/iodine) to a tub of relatively filtered water (so things can diffuse) and wait an hour.
Most hikers (who bother) use a more coarse filter (for bacteria only). Often these are treated with iodine as well, and perhaps charcoal to remove bad tastes. These keep clogging problems down, and make cleaning somewhat more easy. That's what the LifeStraw is based on.
I hope this is really an advancement, but it has the smell of an ad.
Does it remove Dihydrogen Monoxide from the water?
This actually takes quite a while; for most people, urine is upwards of 98% water. Sure, if you drink nothing but urine for months you may develop problems -- but if you're stuck somewhere and water is in short supply, you should definitely drink your urine. It only takes the average human 3 or 4 days to die of thirst, and if you don't know when help will arrive, don't risk it.
I'm not sure you understand the purpose of peeing.
-Dave
From the lifesaver systems "unique features" page:
Finally. I hate when my teat gets all chewed up. It's also pretty creepy that my previous teat can taste me whenever I use it.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
HOWEVER, it can only filter particles down to 200nm, which is good enough to get just about all bacteria and some viruses. But, this new one filters down to 15nm which covers just about everything. Slap a charcoal filter on it to absorb toxins, and it sounds like a hell of a water system.
Still, you can have my Pocket filter when you pry it from my cold, dead, dysenteric fingers. ;)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
You need 2 buckets, a cotton t-shirt, propane camp stove ( or a heat source to boil water of some kind ) and bleach.
Cover the mouth of the empty bucket with the cotton t-shit.
Fill the other bucket with suspect water.
Pour the water from the full bucket into the empty bucket through the t-shirt. This filters out the larger baddies.
Presuming at least one of the buckets is metal, you can boil water in that. If not, a pot of some sort is required. The idea is to boil the water to a rolling boil for at least one minute.
Allow the water to cool for at least 30 minutes. Once cool, add 16 drops of bleach per gallon ( or 8 drops per 2 liter bottle ). If the water smells faintly of chlorine, it's safe to drink. If not, repeat adding the bleach.
Thanks to the Red Cross for directions.
A $400 water filtration system is nice, and can be cost effective in some cases ( as others pointed out, shipping and distributing small empty bottles is easier that shipping and distributing water ), but not having one doesn't mean you have no options.
A Human Right
The LifeStraw filters particles from 125 micron down to minimal 15 micron
.015 microns
The Lifesaver Bottle cuts out everything larger than 15nm. 15nm =
So yes, this is new news.
www.joshferguson.org
It's true abortion is such a waste. A few more months and I could have cooked and ate that baby.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
During something like Katrina, there is a lot more crap in the water than just bacteria.
What does this thing do with gasoline, pesticides, and other chemicals coming out of drowned cars, stores, homes, and factories? If it isn't removing these chemicals, then you can't be sure the processed water is safe to drink. You will probably see a lot of sick people who relied on this product, and got poisoned because of the false sense oc security.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
You do realize that 15nm is .015 microns, right?
This isn't a micron filter. A micron filter has pores a few orders of magnitude too large to filter out viruses.
This one, however, does filter viruses.
I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, you should start drinking your own urine, so you get used to the taste, just in case the water suddenly runs out. I know I have!
It wasn't the hurricane that was the problem. It was the levies. Had the levees not broken, we would not be talking about Katrina today.
...and don't even get me started on the emergency response.
Obviously, they are related because the levees would not have broken without the hurricane. But the point here is that the Hurricane did remarkably little damage on it's own. The levees, on the other hand, were responsible for almost all of the issues you read about today.
Just another example of the edges starting to fray with respect to our national infrastructure. Without the levee issues, Katrina isn't special. Powerful? yes. Scary? yes. Destructive? Not really, when compared to something like Andrew or Hugo.
You'll develop problems much faster than that if you drink your own urine.
98% sounds much, but it isn't. It means that the salinity can be up to 2% - not far from sea water. If you drink it, it will make you dry out faster than not drinking at all. See, that's how the (healthy) kidneys work: the stuff you pee out can never have a lower salinity than the rest of your body.
Hey MacGyver is that you!?! This is Pete Thornton. Call into home base will ya buddy... it's been a while.
Drinking pee is harder than you think. I speak from personal experience.
I was lost in the Ozark mountains for 2 days without any supplies. The temperature was over 100F and I had almost no water. The little water I did have was exhausted quickly and the next best alternative was my own pee. I became thirsty enough that drinking my own pee was not even a question - it was a necessity (or so I thought).
I removed my flashlight batteries and peed in my flashlight because it was the only thing I had that could hold liquid.
Guess what happens to your pee when you are dehydrated? It's get much more concentrated. So much so, that I think you'll have a hard time drinking it unless you are, literally, getting close to death. Mine was so strong, I couldn't even stomach the smell much less, drink it. I have never been as thirsty in my life as that day and I have never since, been in a situation as dire as that one. Yet, I couldn't drink it.
While it may be an option early on, as dehydration starts setting in, drinking your own pee becomes less of an option as each hour passes by.
Damn folks still thinking that Katrina only affected New Orleans. Katrina
wiped out entire cities on the Mississippi Gulf coast. Infrastructure
was destroyed for at least 100 miles inland. The military had to **cut**
their way down HWY 49 to reach the coast.
So, to correct your statement, A large percentage of New Orleans problems
were caused, post hurricane, by the failure of the levees. A large percentage
of the problems caused by directly Katrina were actually in Mississippi.
I am a hiker, I use an MSR pump filter.
The MSR pump allows you to exert a fair bit of force and you will get tired pumping a single liter.
The MSR has a coarser (more open filter).
The MSR will start to clog withing tens of liters of what looks like fairly clean water. You then need to clean the filter.
The MSR is actually one of the better filters on the market.
Now how can a filter that is supposedly much tighter, be easier to pump (squeeze bottle) and last for thousands of liters of brackish water with no cleaning requirements mentioned.
I also noticed no technical info when I clicked it on the web page.
Personally I would stay far away until there was independent lab reviews and field testing, because this really doesn't add up.
There is no such country, and there never was. That the pastoral stories you read never mentioned water-born parasites and illnesses (except for the one Slavic fable, where a boy turns into a goat after drinking from a puddle agaisnt his older sister's cautioning), does not mean it never happened.
It is not so much due to the much maligned modern pollution, it is due to the many organisms, whose existence predates man's. Stomach worms are just one — and fairly benign — example.
And if must drink such unfiltered and unboiled water, don't drink from a lake or other standing water. Try to find the fastest running stream you can — you'll have a better chance...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It may sound funny, but it's actually a really valid, and incredibly easy way to make a solar still.
You place stones in a container to weigh it down, place that in a larger container filled with water, and cover it in plastic. A stone placed on top of the plastic sheet, directly over the inner container, allows the condensate that forms on the plastic to run down and drip into the inner container. Simple, effective way to get water that is safe to drink.
Saying you need a few containers is complicating things though. I have built and tested the idea using aluminum foil, plastic wrap, twigs (for support), and some river rocks. It worked perfectly - and I carry enough foil and plastic wrap in my wallet to produce it any time I need to. You may not get a lot of water out of it - and it's generally better to build a fire and use the foil to boil water to sterilize it, but if that isn't available it's great. Folded up, it takes up about as much space as 2-3 credit cards, well worth the space in my wallet if you ask me.
The problem is the idea that you can keep a historic city below sea level and nothing bad will ever happen.
You seem to have forgotten about a little place called Atlantis. Thousands of years below sea-level and I've never heard any bad stories. In fact, their Chupacabra production levels are at an all-time high. I've heard that famous celebrities like Elvis Presley and Bigfoot own real-estate there...
Well, New Orleans wasn't "built" below sea level, it just sank to that point... When it was constructed the land was chosen BECAUSE it was the highest land near the mouth of the Mississippi. The problem is the weight of the city has caused the land to sink over time, resulting in it actually being BELOW sea level currently.
aww man why did you have to post as an AC? I wanna be your friend!
My, slashdot, this field I'm typing into has the perfect dimensions!
And they weren't bottles ;)
They covered your entire body and even had breathing apparatus and nose fittings to catch the moister while you breath.
When you slept at night you slept in a stilltent.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
In fact, pee into a bottle now and store it in your hiking/camping kit for emergencies.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.