Dean Kamen aims to clean water, generate electricity with Slingshot machine
By Donald Melanson 
posted Apr 23rd 2008 6:02PM
posted Apr 23rd 2008 6:02PM
This one has been making the rounds for a little while now (including a recent appearance on The Colbert Report, viewable after the break), but it hasn't received anything near Segway-like coverage, which is all the more curious given that it's potentially a far more important device. Dubbed the Slingshot, Dean Kamen's latest creation promises to do nothing short of producing clean water from virtually any liquid source (without filters) and generate enough electricity to power about 70 energy efficient light bulbs. What's more, Kamen estimates that the machines would cost between $1,000 and $2,000 which, given the number of people a single one is likely to help, is certainly quite the bargain.
He should incorporate this into the water-powered cellphone so any liquid could be used as power and the cellphone will then become an expensive flask.
yes because cellphones are so important (compared to clean water)
"[...]generate enough electricity to power about 70 energy efficient light bulbs"
This statistic makes no sense. Electricity is measured in watts per unit of time--3kilowatts/hour for example. Will this device power 70 lightbulbs for 1 second, 1 hour, 1 day?
"This statistic makes no sense. Electricity is measured in watts per unit of time--3kilowatts/hour for example. Will this device power 70 lightbulbs for 1 second, 1 hour, 1 day?"
Yes. It does makes perfect sense actually, idiot.
If electricity is measured in watts per hour, then logically the device would be powering the bulbs per hour, each hour, as long as it is running.
what's with all this name calling? if you disagree with his argument, then prove it and leave it at that. name calling is the last resort of a douchebag...
The watt capacity makes perfect sense, actually. It's true that units of watt-hours are used for amounts of energy consumed over a period of time (as in billing) and energy capacity (as in the capacity of a battery), the number quoted here, if you read about the machine, is that it is a Stirling engine powered generator with a continuous capacity of 1kW. If it ran for one hour, then it would have generated one kWh of electricity, if it ran for ten hours, it would have generated ten kWh, but regardless, it's pushing electrons at a rate of 1000 joules per second.
So, you're telling me you wouldn't buy a whiskey powered cellphone?
i think it can generate enough power to continuously power 70 bulbs
"Electricity is measured in watts per unit of time..."
No need to go all physicsey on this one, but what is a watt per unit time? 1 Watt = 1 J per second, so you're proposing 1 Watt per second = 1 J per second squared? The acceleration of energy?
Electricity is measured in watts multiplied by time. Hence, kW.h or Kilowatt hours...
I stand completely and utterly corrected. Thank you.
I've learned so much from this argument. It's frakin amazing
Dean Kamen is the man.
Dean needs to stop wearing all denim. yikes!
he's not getting any attention because he invented the douchebag invention of the century.
though admittedly, this is a very cool device. anything that allows me to make others drink my pee, i'm in.
"he's not getting any attention because he invented the douchebag invention of the century."
Obviously the only douchebag is your dad for letting the condom break.
For the right amount of money, anyone will drink pee.
that haircut of yours must be the douchebag invention of the century.
wow, even if you're joking, you are quite possibly the most self-absorbed, ignorant and short-sighted person i have encountered on this site.
I thought you were responding to your own comment, since it was self -absorbed and ignorant itself, what with the making people drink your pee and all comment.
Dean Kamen keeps stealing my ideas. =(
how does it work.... gosh i'm counting on you, engadget, to fill in at least some of the details.
From how I understood it:
Cow manure is used as a heat source to distill the water. The excess heat is then used to make a sterling engine power a generator.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong!
It takes any sort of heat which powers the purification system. Any excess heat goes to an electrical generator. I think that's right, from what I remember of him on the Colbert Report.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/16/technology/business2_futureboy0216/index.htm
The filtration system needs to be paired with a power source, so this could come as a set with his other invention. Engadget, and the site that they link to, and the site that that site links to, combined two seperate inventions. Notice in the clip there is no mention of power. Try following the link trail, this story has been around, and around and around.
There should be a picture above his head of somebody peeing on a lightbulb to get the full effect.
Calvin
Blue Jeans overload!
Reminds me of that Family Guy episode. Jeans, jean shirt, jean jacket.
How's it going Denim Dan? You look like the president, chairman, and CEO of Levi Strauss. Hey where'd you get the Canadian tuxedo?
It's a Canadian Tuxedo
Maybe its just me, but i think this guy and his company are amazing. The segway, (hate it if you want) is ground breaking machine, just the technology behind it. I can't say its something i could of imagined years ago. If this water cleaning machine works as its supposed to, it will really change the world.
Don't forget the iBot Mobility System wheelchair that not only stands up, but climbs stairs!
http://www.ibotnow.com/about-ibot.html
I personally know a couple people whose lives were improved incredibly by his insulin pump.
Screw the developing world, he should market this directly to the middle class. Install it in the bathroom, pee in it, have it collect all your gray water (shower/dishwater) and rain, then use the fresh water for all your drinking/cooking/cleaning/lawn watering needs AND power your home! This is WAY bigger than the Segway!
...'power ours homes'...
HAHA...not even close, 70 energy-efficient lightbulbs use about as much energy as an electric kettle boiling a litre of water from room temperature once....
Okay, "power" is a stretch, but it would at least light our homes, unless you have more than 70 rooms in your home or light every room with 10-bulb chandeliers.
Alternately, by your example, it could provide both the water and power for an entire family's afternoon tea.
haha....touché...
Yeah, but are you going to market iDung to the middle class of the world?
wow screw the developing world... hmm i cant even come up with a response to such a stupid statement.
Ironic, eh?
Love the concept. Saw it on The Colbert Report and I am just waiting for the production models to start shipping.
It appears to be a Vapor Compression filter powered by a Stirling engine.
Neither is a new technology, but if he has managed to shrink them down into a box that that size, and it gets the claimed results for real, that's some sweet engineering.
It seems like what Kamen has done here is combine a water purification system with a Stirling Engine for efficient power generation. Everywhere I see this device written about, however, it seems like it's implied that this is some kind of mystical box of magic and wonder. All one must do is put dirty water in one end and get clean water and free electricity out the other!
I would love to see this device in action (as in, not hooked up on the set of a Comedy Central TV show), as I admire and respect Mr. Kamen a great deal. Even if this is "only" an extremely efficient power generator and water purifier, it is still an outstanding invention. Like the Segway, though, I think this might be getting too much hype right out the gate, setting itself up for failure when everybody realizes it doesn't really cure cancer and abolish income tax.
Ahhh...abolishing Income Tax. That's the Holy Grail right there.
$1 for the original news source that drove this article... I got tired of clicking backwards somewhere around 7 or 8 clicks in. I believe it may have started from a 29 Mar post on something called Red Ferret. http://www.redferret.net/?p=10222. But, this wasn't news, but rather a mini notes-to-self book report. Nothing new about the Slingshot on his DEKA Research website, http://www.dekaresearch.com/. In other words, no new news here, and none since his appearance on Colbert. Amy I missing anything? I'd love to learn more...
Exactly, I was looking for the same thing. I couldn't find any real "new" news and was wondering where we get more details about this thing.
I'd like to know more about how it runs on cow dung, and what else would it run on? (wood, charcoal?)
How does it clean the water without filters or chemicals,etc?
How much power does it put out?
Are there moving parts? It looks robust, is it?
It looks like the original is a cnn article from February 2006. There is more information in the original. http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/16/technology/business2_futureboy0216/index.htm
This invention needs one massive round of applause.
This also needs to be funded by our government, purchased, and distributed (under supervision) to parts of the world that are suffering from a lack of clean drinking water.
If this thing does sell and makes a difference, then i think he might be getting a few awards.
Please point to some evidence that would prove that the government is capable of undertaking this task without screwing it up beyond recognition. While you're at it, point at something that explains to me why my tax dollars should be used in this way.
No. If the government undertook this, I can guarantee you that it would be millions - if not billions - of dollars over budget, half the budget will have been spent to build bridges in some Congressman's district, the other half will have been used to pay off some lobbyists, the units won't work properly, they won't be delivered until three years after they're due, and when they are delivered, it will turn out that we've actually delivered some warheads or something by mistake.
They did OK with this thing called the "Internet"...
There's a little more about it here: http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2006/02/segway_turns_to.html
I think it's a little unclear, but Kamen has actually introduced TWO devices. One is a water filter, and the other is a generator (which can be used to power the filter). It's not a single magic box that generates clean water AND electricity.
I second this. The water purifier is called the Slingshot, while the other is the Stirling engine-based generator. The purifier seems to cost around $1500, while the generator is more like $3700 (as the redferret link jeffmefun pointed out so says). So it's not one machine that does two jobs, it's two machines, hence the two in the picture: the purifier is the one on the left. Chalk it up to the ages-old game of telephone played on the Internet.
Suuure screw the water and power companys! Now how are CalAm and PGE going to create artificial shortages in Cal? :)
Saw this guy on Colbert as well. I think what he's doing is great, and I hope his creation really takes off.
Are they going to build cities around it too, like the Segway? This is more likely to turn into another extraordinary engineering feat that solves a problem nobody needs solving... But hey, I'd love to be proven wrong. I was sad when Pons & Fleischman were debunked.
Clean water/energy shortages = scooters, of course.
:(
I just checked and someone actually bought http://prettygirlscarryingheavythings.com/ and it's coming soon.
WTF??
You mean it doesn't exist? I was just about to check it out.
I won't dis the water purifier, since there is very little info.
But at $3500 (I could be wrong but I think its the quoted price in a source), the electricity generator appears too expensive.
You can buy a 1kw Honda generator for $700 (chinese knockoffs even cheaper). Assuming cow dung is free (which it isn't since it's soil nutrients and stuff), you still would save money by buying the Honda generator .. unless you kept his generator running for multiple years. Anyway, Kamen doesnt seem to understand that the biggest problem in developing countries is the lack of immediate capital ..so just because it may turn out cheaper in the long run -- which I doubt .. it doesnt mean that this is a solution for them. I hope I am wrong and that it finds niches at least.
I think people in remote rural villages with no clean water would rather have a water purifier than venture capital. As far as the Honda generator goes, those run on gas right?
Yes water purifiers are useful that is why I didnt dis itBut i dont know the economics of theirs compared to competing solutions.
The honda generators run on gasoline, but my point is that with the money left over you can give them a few barrels to last them a couple years. There is usually enough connection with civilization for people to get resupplied with gasoline .. that is not an issue.If they have access to stuff that can be burnt in the Kamen generrator .. they usually arent in the middle of a desert. Stuff like cow dung and firewood actually have low energy densities so you need to collect a lot of it ..not to mention the local environmental resource depletion.. so don tthink they are unlimited "free" energy sources for rural people in devloping countries.
I see what you mean but I think it's better if we move away from using gasoline and move towards using technology such as this. If we allow these developing countries to use gasoline extensively, the country will become dependent and it will be much more difficult for them to function as a country while still not damaging the environment in the years to come.
Making them dependent on gasoline will also increase oil prices, as well as magnifying the shortage.
Although it might cost more, the costs of these machines can always be subsidized by people other than the government, and it wont really have a negative effect on the economy as a whole in the long run.
It's a pretty kick-ass machine.
Oh heck I'm sure he knows that they don't have the money... he's a genius for heavens sake. I could only assume he's not out on the market for the small villages to actually buy these machines from him for a profit and thats why he's trying to get the price to a reasonable $1000 but It will most likely be sold (and/or donated) to aid organizations and then be given to the villages. There is no way in hell that they could raise that much money to buy one themselves.
Assuming it'll work on any heat source, that includes burning cow pies, wood, garbage, etc. Things that can be burned are far more common and easy to get than gasoline, which, btw, cannot last very long in a container. Ever try to use last-year's gas to start your mower in the Spring? Gasoline has a shelf life.
Since the point is to provide drinking water to a village, I'd rather not have them at the mercy of the gasoline merchants in their area. Better to keep their water source free from politics and piracy.
MORE details please. I can power my entire home lighting for under 400watts of power per hours. I WANT ONE.
As for income taxes. I DO NOT have a problem with income taxes. They ARE needed and they ARE good.
My problem is the INCORRECT idea that WAGES are INCOME. They are NOT
If you get a salery or per hour wage YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY INCOME. That is a 100% equal barter of HOURS of y our Life for Money. NO income is gained in the transaction so NO INCOME TAX should apply.
Interest. Bonuses, tips, commissions THATS INCOME wages are in no way shape or form definable as INCOME.
No, income tax is not needed in any way. Even given your flawed definition of "income" (anything, by that logic, could be construed as "bartering x for y"), taxing it is wrong.
There are only two [domestic] taxes the government should impose: consumption tax and property tax. If you do not purchase goods or services (ie make use of government standards and organizations such as the FDA), then your money should not be taken to subsidize the government services that you are not using. And the property tax because no matter what you consume, if you are living within the borders of the country then you are taking advantage of universal government services (for example, protection from foreign invaders, roads and bridges, etc.)
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that almost all of your income is through wages or hourly compensation.
I'm all for a progressive tax code but what you're saying sounds to me a lot like "I shouldn't pay taxes because I don't want to, but I am a strong supporter of taxes and everybody else should pay!"
So... worker who happens to get payed $50k in salary a year shouldn't pay income tax. But cliche single mom who works in a diner and earns minimum wage + tips should. Oh yeah... great idea. I like this. Children's allowance should be taxed because they didn't earn it either. Let's see... I think we could also exempt investments because that income was hard earned by research and trading strategy.
A bonus we'll just assume was in order to compensate a salaried employee for working a lot of overtime so that's not taxable now either.
The entrepreneur who sells his startup for millions... well... they are paying him for the company. And he did "make" the company. So that's really compensation not income.
So I guess really that only leaves: Gambling (except where you count cards, and that's compensation for your education time), Kids' Allowances and money found on the street.
Dean Kamen is Superman.
So close, but maybe he'd still like to hang out with Terri Hatcher...
So if I put the clean water output tube back into the dirty water bucket do I make a perpetual energy machine? :)
no, because it consumes cow dung
How would it purify water polluted with petroleum, since that will evaporate along with the water?
two stages of distilation.
first stage, only the water and things with a lower boiling point are evaporated and condensed.
this second bucket is heated to just below water's boiling point, so the other stuff evaporates away from it, including petroleum.
Dean Kamen talked about this at the FIRST Championship in Atlanta on the weekend. He played the Colbert clip and then talked about it. He did say that at this time it is not possible and there are many engineering problems to work out, and that it's just a prototype now. I was there and it was amazing to actually see him talk about it in person.
yeah, i was there. he seemed really depressed during that speech.
apparently he thinks the world as we know it is going to end because of stupid people, and that FIRST is one of the only hopes for humanity.
he's probably not far off, go to the average high school if you want proof.
I have an environmental science degree, and in a lot of my classes we talked about the fact that the number 1 killer of people world wide is something that is related to bad water, either not enough or it is dirty and they get sick from it. They mention that in the clip. But we also talked a lot in the classes about population, and resource management.
So this has me thinking, if all of a sudden we drasticly cut the death rate down, isn't the population in places where this will help the most going to explode. Those are also the places that either won't accept or don't have access to birth control. It is known that as a society becomes more modern and advanced, the birthrate goes down, like in Japan and much of Western Europe. But many of the places this will help the most are not advanced, and will suffer from a huge explosion in the birth rate.
These are places where there are already limited resources like food, and if the population explodes, it will just mean more people dieing from starvation, more wars and fighting over limited resources, etc.
I don't know, what do you guys think. Should each one of these water cleaners come with a lifetime supply of the pill and condoms? (Catholics need not respond. You all do just fine trying to overpopulate the world as it is.
Do you really think that mothers losing their babies to cholera is an acceptable form of birth control?
Although the problems of population explosion and healthcare are connected, I think their solutions should be kept completely separate. We should provide people with incentives to not have many children, instead of thinking of ways to increase the death rate.
I'm catholic and I have no want or need to have an obscene amount of children. I also believe in science, the big bang and use birth control. (hehehehe, I got to use big bang and birth control in the same sentence!)
There are more things than just dirty water that control the population in unfortunate and war-torn nations. Giving people an ability to have clean water from resources they have - then we should do it. And you don't have to be catholic to try and help people.
You hit on exactly the problem with all technocratic solutions to problems. They come from the point of view that if there is a problem technology can fix, then they have the duty of fixing it, without fully examining the total repercussions. Another good example of this is bio-fuels. People got the technologically clever idea of replacing fossil fuels with fuels made from crops, and set about trying to do that. What they didn't take into account was that if farmers could get more money for selling their crops for fuel, it would create a food shortage. Thus, we now have worldwide food riots, largely because someone had the clever idea of burning the food instead of letting people eat it.
You are absolutely right that if these machines were to just magically be placed all over the world, it would be an ecological and political disaster of unimaginable proportions, since the population in already overpopulated countries would explode. The best laid plans...
Yep, it's a Catch-22. We all want everyone to live yet we don't have the resources to do it (unless of course we expand into space and get more resources, but given our current spending priorities that isn't going to happen before humanity destroys itself. I say good riddance).
^Longest statement in parentheses EVER.
To Sharko
Do a little research on Game Theory.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-theory/
Besides being very educational on a wide variety of topics it will also show you that utopias are impossible to create. Even if every person on the globe was an altruist, we would still produce polarized altruistic viewpoints, which would lead to a negative outcome for one or both parties.
... "if all of a sudden we drasticly cut the death rate down"...
Any countries advanced enough to develop significant longevity extension would certainly not rush to share it with poor, over-populated nations. They are reluctant enough as it is, when it comes to sending food and birth control options.
The single biggest factor in population rates is women's literacy. If you teach enough women to read, the birth rate always drops. This is a well-established correlation.
Teaching little girls to read is not a particularly expensive or difficult undertaking, but it's not "cool". It's not "technosexy". It's kind of boring in a marketing campaign.
So Dean Kamen shows us fake miracle machines instead of sponsoring teachers and supplying reading books for kids.
Why are people such racist elitist fucks? If saving millions of lives by providing clean water creates another problem then we'll work on solving that problem next. L. M. Lloyd & bamboo you're patchetic and you should be ashamed.
As an alternative, you could just kill off a few of your kids to make room for the ones this saves. The world will thank you I'm sure. In comparison, your kiddos will have had a much fuller life and can die happy. Better to let someone else have a bit of fun too before doing the "dust to dust" gig.
Seriously, this kind of question is 1) appallingly ethnocentric and morally bankrupt, 2) legitimate, and 3) expected for a society that increasingly looks exclusively to science for its ethical yardstick. As western societies move further into substituting science for traditional religious heritages, we will see the demoting of humanity to simple biological organisms no more worthy of life as worthless bacterium.
Dude, you need to get into a ethics class before graduation. Yes, someone needs to study the question, but increasing human suffering isn't the answer. People bread like rabbits when their only hope for survival is to have enough kids that one might actually make it past 5 and take care of them as they die of some easily preventable death at 30. Once a long, productive, and reasonably happy life is assured, birth rates go down dramatically. Or we could just nuke a few million just in case.
That may be true in the short term, but in the long term, the system will naturally achieve equilibrium. If the system cannot support the current population, then the population will decrease until it can be supported.
I do not have an environmental science degree, but isn't that ES101? They taught me that in High School Biology. Maybe I am mistaken, and introducing sapient creatures into the equation would change it?
@ A.C.E.R
If anyone is the "elitist fuck," it would be you. In typical western technocratic fashion, you think your Promethean gesture of handing technology to the poor ignorant masses is so wonderful in and of it self, that you have no obligation to question or even think about the long-term ramifications of your "gift."
The reality of the situation is that solving a technological problem a society has (like water purification) without teaching them how to do it themselves, almost always causes more problems than it solves. In reality, a good percentage of those deaths from bad water could be avoided simply by boiling the water before they drank it. The fact that they aren't doing that is a pretty clear sign that what they need is education, not a magic box that makes their water clean.
I know it is hard for the average affluent westerner to grasp, but the problems that plague most of humanity cannot be solved by buying everyone really neat gadgets. I know that donating money to give them cool tech is much easier than figuring out how to address the root causes, but that doesn't mean it is the right choice.
Well my job here is done. I posted that to get people thinking and talking about the subject, and it worked well.
I would also like to say that I grew up Catholic, and MadMike, you are going to Hell. Just so you know.
Here is proof............
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DxovgI7NI&eurl
Don't worry, I'll be there to keep you company :)
Engadget,
I really want to know how these machines work! These machines could save millions of lives and power their cell phones too!
It's a novel idea. I originally thought from the colbert report & the Engadget article that is was a water generator that also created clean water.
It's great for farms and third world countries. I'm looking for a system that can generate electricity from water to put in my house. Dig a well, clean the water, turn it into hyrdogen and then generate electricity - run the system off of Solar Panels on the roof. You really only need 12kW - 20kW to power a house. Most times if you use more than 5kW that's a lot and the rest you can sell to the electric co.
If you ignore the cost of such a system ($12k for two wells, $3k for water purification system, $40k for solar, $100k for water generator) the savings and the added money you make from selling the excess energy could probably net you $8k a year.
My electric bill is $170 - $280/m and water & sewer is $25 a month so in a year my energy cost is $3,660. Say you sell 60% of your energy on average to the electric co, you then have $5,000 a year. That's on average $8,660 a year.
The system will pay for itself in 18 years (not including tax write offs and govt. grants for having a "green" house).
Say if your an average joe without $155k laying around. Say you get a second mortgage for that amount. The money you save will cover the mortgage and then some. Then think of the rising prices of energy and the government money you can get, plus the tax writeoff of the mortgage. With the left over net savings, you can invest it and send your kids to college.
Turning water into hydrogen and then using electricity and then using the hydrogen to create electricity again??? Bad idea.
Your forgetting maintenance costs as well. Solar panels dont have an unlimited life.
FWIW, the power company only pays a fraction of what they charge for power. They will only buy at wholesale rates.
What the world really needs are more nuclear power plants.
so could you hook this up to your sewage system and send the electicity into the electic grid to lower your electic bill? water where i am is dirt cheap but electric is ridiculously expensive :(
This just announces that he can wipe out 50% of the world's disease and all the audience can do is go "WOOOOOOO!" as if they're the studio audience for Married with Children.
So we get another invention that uses some pretty cool engineering yet has no real practical use, whoo hoo.
So you burn an energy source to boil water which powers a steam generator, in this case a sterling engine, which produces a small ammount of electricity. The steam is then captured and then condensed into pure water. This is revolutionary how?
You could get more electricity from a solar panel for the money and for the water you could just buy a few Lifestraws. Better and more practical solutions already exist which is why Kamen's in inventions really are nothing more than forms of performance art.
Where do all the water impurities go? Are they blasted into the air? Is there a nice cup of super-toxic pollutants that someone has to contact and empty every hour?
Things don't just disappear. If you have a well full of arsenic (Kamen's example) and you purify all the water, where does all that arsenic go?
Then there's the energy cost of running the machine. Did anyone figure out the Watts per liter of clean water? The machine doesn't run itself.
This is complete deception. They leave out all the hard parts and only mention the good part. It's like announcing a "cure for world hunger" without mentioning that it's eating cow shit.
Even more pathetic than somebody who misspells pathetic!
Dean Kamen can do whatever he wants. I still despise the guy. Doing good deeds doesn't make him any less of a prick.
I saw him give a speech at a robotics thing. He trashed all team sports (and by extension anyone that has anything to do with them [and his weird buddy Woody Flowers did the same thing]), asked a patent official about a stupid patent of his while said official was making a speech to a crowded auditorium, and basically implied that anyone that would rather drive a regular car than a hybrid is a terrible person.
And you know what? Coopertition. That word alone makes me hate him so much. That's what he was putting that poor USPTO guy on the spot for. He wanted to patent the coopertition.
Why not use concentrated solar (either trough based or dish) to provide the heat source? No need to gather cow dung or cut down trees.
Wouldn't $7,000 in charcoal filters go a lot further and be easier to distribute?