How To Turn Salt Water Into Fresh Water (Simple Improvised Distillation)

hi everyone in this video I would like to show you a very simple distillation setup that can be made with little more than two glass bottles maybe some metal trays and some sand using this setup we can turn saltwater into drinkable freshwater and it can even be used for very simple chemistry applications so the primary components of this setup are two glass bottles and the wider the bottles are in diameter the better I've chosen relatively small glass bottles for this video because these are the most common size of bottles that you're likely to find especially if you are looking to find one washed up on a beach somewhere in case you needed to distill water for your actual survival I also have a pair of metal trays now these trays are not absolutely essential but it will make this process a lot easier to manage these are meant to contain the bottles and support them over a flame but at a later point in this video I'll explain how you can get away without them the first part of this process will be to prepare an area such that the two bottles can rest mouth-to-mouth similar to this the important part is that one of them needs to be suspended over a heat source which for my purposes I'm using this homemade rocket stove this could be done over an open campfire you just need to find a way to suspend the bottle above the flame either using rocks or logs this is where the metal trays come in and you can see in both of mine I've cut a small notch on one side and this is only there so that the neck of the bottles can sit a little lower in the pan this is by no means necessary but it will make the setup a little more secure with the trays secured in place both of them are now filled with sand the sand will allow the trays to more efficiently act as heat sinks one tray to cool one of the bottles and the other tray will be used to very evenly heat the other bottle so that it doesn't shatter from being heated too much on one side now here's the biggest limiting factor to this method only a volume of water can be distilled that will fit in the bottle when the bottle is turned sideways without overflowing the neck because the bottle will be rested in the sand like this the bottle is pressed firmly into the sand so that it gets good thermal contact and will be heated evenly now in this bottle I have a very strong solution of saltwater to replicate seawater it's not actually seawater because I live in Michigan and that is a long way from any salty water source however I think this will be a good analogue to test this method with now the second bottle is adjusted such that its mouth will meet up with the first and it is also pressed into the sand to obtain good thermal contact another reason that I'm using sand for this is because it makes it very easy to finally adjust the bottles angles it's best to make the bottles meet up as evenly as possible so that there's not much room for water vapor to escape we want it all to make it into this second bottle where it can condense as fresh water as an additional measure to keep the cold half of this setup cold I wet the sand on this side with water and in fact the entire bottle could be covered with more wet sand or a wet towel to allow evaporative cooling to take place this is the final setup now I just need to fire up my heat source and we can see the results with such a large quantity of sand in this tray it does take a little while for it to reach water's boiling point and get this process started but once the sand has reached that point it stays hot for a long time so it's a pretty quick process as the water boils dry in this first bottle to simply refill it and you can continue on with the distillation process as long as you want so well this gets started I can tell you about how this can be done using nothing more than the glass bottles you don't need metal trays at all and this is great because you can find glass bottles on almost any Beach in the world because our trash has gone everywhere if you can find two glass bottles you can distill water and the way that you do that is you first make a pile of sand and you bury one of the bottles in the very top of that pile with the mouth sticking out now that will be the bottle that is heated and you put your supply of salt water that you need distilled into that bottle and then you build a fire on top of the mound you need to heat this mound very hot to the boiling point of water and that is why you make a mound because it is easier to heat the very tip of that pile of sand to water's boiling point then it would be to heat a flat area where heat can distribute in all directions now for the second bottle you still do need to improvise a way to hold the mouth of that bottle against the mouth of the first that is buried under the sand if you find it difficult to support the bottle accurately with nothing but sticks and stones it is possible to hold the second cold bottle in your hands and all you need to do is find a piece of fabric say the shirt off your back now wet this fabric in your salt water that you're trying to distill and that will keep the bottle cold you can then hold the bottle by hand against the mouth of the first and you will see water begin to distill inside I should note that distilling water is only a safe method to create drinkable water if you're trying to remove mineral contaminants like salt it doesn't work if you're trying to remove things like oil or gasoline or other man-made contaminants because those things will evaporate away with the water and they will distill in your second bottle that's no good you don't want to drink any distilled water if you're trying to distill out man-made contaminants it may be a little bit difficult to see on camera but there is already a significant quantity of distilled water collected inside of this second bottle and what I'm doing is I'm just continuously rotating this bottle so I am NOT using a damp rag over top of it to cool the top half instead I'm rotating the bottle so that as this top portion becomes hot from the steam it's rotated into the cold sand below and in that way the entire bottle maintains a cold temperature which causes the distillation to go much faster so now it's been about 10 minutes since the water started boiling and I think I have enough water in this bottle that I can give it a test I would say this is about a third of the water that we started with in this bottle and there's still quite a lot left that is not yet distilled it's still boiling over here distillation is a very slow process so while this may not look like a very impressive quantity of water for this setup to have only been boiling for about 10 minutes this is easily producing at a rate that could keep several people alive all that's really left is to give it a try and see if this process did in fact remove all of the salt absolutely pure I didn't even taste any salt around the rim which usually you would expect from water boiling a little too much and maybe contacting the second bottle that didn't even happen in this case it is absolutely pure water so everyone I want to thank you for watching this video I really appreciate your views I appreciate your comments I still read all of my comments what are you laughing about yeah I want to thank you for leaving your comments watching this video if you really enjoyed this video please consider supporting my channel on patreon it would be awesome to have enough patreon support that this channel was self-sustaining that I didn't have to rely on sponsors and things of that nature to help fund these projects so I'll put a link in the video description if you want to check out my patreon page thank you for looking at that if you do thank you for watching this video I'll see you next time

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 4,831,180

Rating: 4.8602462 out of 5

Keywords: How To, Distill, Distillation, Fresh Water, Survival, Filtration, Filter, Outdoors, Camping, NightHawkInLight, Desalination, Desalinator

Id: R_-wFiFdwAE

Length: 8min 48sec (528 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/MarlinMr]

The post from 1 month ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Survival/comments/96k9jk/how_to_use_an_improvised_distillation_setup_to/

[u/66D6]

I usually carry all these tools and components with me at all times. Just in case...

[u/ericlarsen2]

Also, if you have access to that much glass and metal raw materials there are drastically more efficient and simpler ways to distill salt water.

[u/Smile_lifeisgood]

How long can you live off of distilled water?