Anyone Tried Making your own Watermaker?

[sy_gilana]

To answer the OP question, yes, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of home brew watermakers out there. It is not Black Magic, its just physics.

These probably even include a few evaporative units, which still need some sort of pump to create vacuum and remove product water.

Watermakers on boats probably form the minority of plants installed. A lot of municipalities use this method.

There is no need to be held hostage by the "marine" world and boat shops, try looking at jurby.com to see what I mean. You can buy a 60lt/h membrane there for about 180 Euros. (Some of the "marine" manufacturers source theirs there)

I have a design for an evap unit. Actually when I was at sea professionally that is all we had.

The biggest advance in water treatment or water makers is going to be the advent of Graphene. This material promises to be able to make potable water out of sea water at pressures of less than one Bs. (14.7 Psi)

Imagine a watertank under the waterline in your bilge, with a seacock to the outside, and a spiral wound drum filter of Graphene keeping your tank full of drinking water powered by the pressure of the sea water outside the hull.

Cant wait....

[Lepke]

Depending on how much water you want... it's easy. I built mine. For amounts under 200 gallons/24 hour day, you can do it for a few hundred dollars. You'd need about 3 - 10 amp of 12 volt. My system tests better than any city water and everyone seems to like the taste. You do need a UV light to ensure all bacteria is dead. MY system kills about 98% before the light. Once in awhile I chlorine my tanks but in 3 continuous years running, I have had no problems other than routine filter and membrane changes. Mine system is a higher volume so I can make enough water while occasionally running a generator less than an hour a day. If you aren't sure where to start and want help, contact me directly.
Lepke

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by Lepke

You do need a UV light to ensure all bacteria is dead. MY system kills about 98% before the light. Once in awhile I chlorine my tanks but in 3 continuous years running, I have had no problems other than routine filter and membrane changes.

I’ve seen this UV light thing before and feel the need to comment because the impression is being made that an RO unit must have a UV light to make safe drinking water, which is simply not the case. The size of bacteria is too large for them to be passed through the RO Membrane. With RO, we are talking about a molecular sieve that is not passing Sodium (Na+) and Chloride (Cl-) molecules at a 99.8% rejection rate. Adding UV lights to an RO outlet in my opinion is more of a sales-add-on-upcharge feature than a necessary item.

Now I DO recommend putting a UV light on the outlet of your water tank because as all of us that have lived aboard can tell you, the contents of your tank sitting warm can breed all kinds of nasty bugs that didn’t come through the water maker. An Activated Carbon filter and UV light is a good addition to the outlet of your water tank right after your ships pressurized water pump.

Just a note about membrane life to Lepke, if your RO Membranes are needing to be changed out regularly in a 3 year time period…something is wrong with either your water maker or the chlorine you are adding to your tank isn’t being removed by an activated carbon prefilter prior to fresh water flushing. You should be getting 3-7 years life from your RO Membranes.

Originally Posted by sy_gilana

The biggest advance in water treatment or water makers is going to be the advent of Graphene. This material promises to be able to make potable water out of sea water at pressures of less than one Bs. (14.7 Psi) ..

Game changer not just for the Marine RO Market, which is nothing in the big picture of things, but just imagine all the drought stricken coastal towns that would have an almost endless supply of water! California may actually be able to give farmers some water again that right now is being used for the delta smelt fish.