Clean Water Made as Easy as Sun Tea

by Andrea Millar — July 4, 2008

Great resource management comes of utilizing what you got. In Mexico, quality sun beats down on many parts of the country for a large part of the year. Clean water, however, is rather harder to find, and while some people can resort to bottled methods, contamination still plagues a large part of the population. Mexico's Iluxon seized the opportunity with their "Digital Sun Distiller" to skate in and take first prize at the Freescale Technology Forum. On top of the $10,000 first prize, they also received an invitation to participate in the Grand FTF Challenge, coming up in 2009.

Greentech further elaborates that Iluxon estimates that a family who purchases their distiller gets a return on their investment after 7 months. Although the idea isn't new, Iluxon's model is one of the more successful for its ability to maintain a constant pressure. This is done (don't ask me how) by chips in the device that monitor environmental conditions and compensate properly for them. Running optimally, the distiller should purify about 2 gallons of water per day.

If Iluxon can bring their prices down a little bit, the distiller may become a realistic purchase for many families who are feeling the crunch from recent food and oil prices. Not bad for a company that seems to mainly specialize in on/off timer switches.