More Solar Powered Innovations For A Better World
There are seemingly infinite applications for solar energy. Here are a few more to add to our list of favorites from last week:
Caltech's Solar Powered Toilet
About two-thirds of people on Earth use latrines or defecate out in the open, and 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year because of sanitation problems. So last year the Gates Foundation held the Reinvent the Toilet Fair for a new toilet design that meets the following criteria: (1) It has to effective without piped-in water, a sewer connection, and electricity, and (2) It cannot produce pollutants. The winning design by Caltech uses solar energy to power the electrochemical waste treatment system that fully disinfects human waste and produce useful byproducts, such as fertilizer and decontaminated water. The latter can be reused for more toilet flushes or irrigation purposes. This video explains the entire process in simple terms:
Solar Water Purifier and Desalinator
To our benefit, the famous line of Samuel Taylor Coleridge—water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink—will soon no longer hold true. Thanks to the rise of new water desalination technologies like the Carocell Solar Water Purifier, we are now able to obtain safe potable water from unlikely sources like polluted water, industrial waste water, and even sea water.
Designed by F Cubed in Australia, the system receives impure water by gravity or pump into a feeder pipe at the top of the unit. The input water then slowly runs down the solar collector, which vaporizes and condenses through several processes, and turns into distilled water at the bottom of the unit. Using the same natural processes that produce the world's rainfall, the Carocell solar panels uses no electricity and no chemicals while emitting zero greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the solar panels are low cost, robust, and modular for easy installment in any setting.
Solar Powered Smartphones That Monitor Illegal Logging
While this is still under planning stages, there's plenty to be excited about. Rainforest Connection will soon implement a system in western Sumatra to detect real-time illegal deforestation and consequently alert authorities to stop the activity as it's happening. Current monitoring systems, such as satellite photos, can track illegal logging after the fact (when it's too late to do anything about it). The real-time system will use discarded smartphones, powered by small solar panels, to monitor audio frequencies across areas of protected rainforest and send alerts to authorities when the sounds of chainsaws are detected—protecting the rainforest and recycling old smartphones in one swoop! The organization is starting to collect donations of old Android phones for their next pilots. Donate yours today.
