Gabriele Diamanti's Eliodomestico is an incredibly simple water purifier. So simple, in fact, that you just tip the dirty water in, leave it in the sun for the day and come back home to find up to five liters of clean drinking water waiting for you.
It works like a regular solar still, only it should be cheaper, easier to make and more portable. The Eliodomestico is made from terracotta pots and a metal "boiler." The user pours water in the top, where it is heated by the sun and boils. The steam then pushes up from this airtight vessel, escapes through a pipe and trickles down to another terracotta pot below.
That's the theory, anyway. I have trouble believing that the sun could boil water, however long you leave it out there. Normal solar stills work by evaporation and condensation to do the same thing, and it may just be that Diamanti has gotten the terms mixed up.
Still, its a handsome looking thing, far better than a cobbled together home-made still. But then, I guess the efficacy is more prized than good looks in the Eliodomestico's target market: the developing world.
Eliodomestico product page [Gabriele Diamanti via Yanko]
