[Xist]

Originally Posted by aerohead

All AC condensate is 'distilled' potable water. There may be airborne mold, spores, etc. inhabiting the evaporator coil exterior though.
I've drinken my own 'urine' from a solar still ( Air Force basic training paid off! )

In "Voyage of the Mimi" they made something like this:

Is that what you made?

I found the image here: StackExchange: Why can't solar stills convert sea water into fresh water?

I thought the best response was:

The amount of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in sea water is about 40,000ppm. Thus for every 1,000L of sea water distilled, you would have 40L of solids left behind after distillation. The amount of room left for water (i.e. the capacity of the 'hole') would thus decrease by 4% each time it was used. The 'hole' would be 50% full of solids after only 17 uses and 90% full after 56 uses.

Assuming you designed your system to go through one distillation cycle every day, your holes would no longer be viable — and would need to be abandoned — roughly every two months.

To rub salt into the wound, you would leave behind hypersaline pits that would kill virtually all nearby plant life. As you dug more and more pits along the countryside, you would progressively turn the environment into a barren wasteland, devoid of life, and subject to extreme erosion.

In conclusion, the illustrated design degrades quickly, scales poorly, and has grave, long-term environmental consequences. That's why a solar sea water still could be suitable for infrequent, individual use, but would be unsuitable for long-term provision of water to the public.

Someone else commented:

The salt that eventually appears is collected and sold in specialty grocery shops.

Instead of using seawater we can use sewage! Then instead of having waste salt we have flammable waste we can incinerate!