Ahead of the next crisis - why is this man's name not a household word?

Solving

the

World's

Water Problems

Ok, so the Segway sort of tanked and medicare may not cover this incredible wheel chair but inventor, Dean Kamen has come up with some other amazing ideas ...

like this one:

The "Slingshot"

"If you stick a hose into anything that looks wet ... it comes out as perfect distilled clean water."

-here are some specs from his appearance on the Colbert Report(!)

the cutting edge show for new technologies(?!)

• It is designed to supply a village with 1,000 liters/day of clean water.

• Any water source works -- ocean, puddle, chemical waste site, hexavalent chrome, arsenic, poison, 50 gallon drum of urine.

• • There are no filters to replace, no charcoal, no anything disposable.
    
  • The Slingshot can use half the waste heat (450 watts) from a sterling engine electrical generator (prototype also being designed by Kamen's company) to boil its water.
    
  • The heat put into the water is recovered with a "counter-flow heat exchanger" and recycled to heat the next batch of water
    
  • Slingshot will be less then 60 lbs.
    
  • The prototype slingshot was hand-built for $100K. The goal is to get production units down to $1,000 to $2,000.
    
  • The sterling engine, used as an electrical generator, can produce about 200 watts of power (it will never be more then 20 percent efficient) and 800 watts of waste heat (the waste heat that slingshot uses).
    
  • Later sources say the sterling engine can generate 1 kilowatt or enough power for 70 high-efficiency light bulbs.
    
  • The sterling engine can run on anything that burns, propane or even cow dung.
    
  • The slingshot is a David and Goliath reference aimed at putting water and power back in the hands of the individuals.
    

Evidently inventing something incredible is only half the battle.

The other half is raising awareness and getting it to the people who need it in a way that works.