LIFE RAFT MAKES SEA WATER DRINKABLE

LIFE RAFT MAKES SEA WATER DRINKABLE

By Tracy Staedter

Aug. 24, 2010 -- As a young girl growing up in Massachusetts, Kim Hoffman spent many summers on her parent's sailboat. Sometimes she would stare at the water and think, "There's got to be a way to turn the seemingly endless ocean into viable drinking water."

In graduate school at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, she designed a life raft that could do just that. Hoffman's Sea Kettle, which recently made the shortlist of this year's James Dyson Award competition, could mean the difference between life and death for a person stranded at sea.

The Sea Kettle is meant to be an insulated, sturdy shelter able to turn sea water into fresh water. A person using the raft operates hand pumps within the cabin in order to draw sea water into a plastic reservoir on the roof. Heat from the sun causes the water to evaporate. The salt-free water vapor from the evaporated seawater can be captured and collected in containers within the raft's walls.

Hoffman says the desalination process she incorporated into the designed was inspired by the Watercone, a portable water desalination cone made by Mage Water Management. In their design, evaporating water from a bottom tray condenses onto the walls of a cone-shaped lid. The cone can be turned upside down in order to pour the potable water into a drinking vessel. By adding that concept to a conventional life raft design, Hoffman came up with the Sea Kettle.

 

However, the Sea Kettle design, the seawater is put into a reservoir in the roof. The condensed water droplets collect in one of four shafts and then flow down into pockets, which can be accessed from inside the raft by drinking through a rube. Hoffman says the raft can provide drinking water for up to five people on a daily basis.

The overall winner for the James Dyson Aware will be announced October 5 and will be awarded more than US $15,000.