KEY POINTS:
A BMW Group employee has developed an inexpensive device for creating safe drinking water.
Stephan Augustin, an industrial designer with the German car company, has been acknowledged for inventing the Watercone.
An international jury presented the National Energy Globe Award 2007 to Augustin in Brussels, with guests at the awards ceremony including Mikhail Gorbachev, Jos Manuel Barroso and former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan.
The Watercone is a solar-powered desalinator that generates fresh drinking water from salt or brackish water.
With its rigid outer skin, the plastic cone can be used floating on water or on damp ground. The sun's rays shining on it cause the water to evaporate under the cone and condense on the inside. The droplets collect in a trough.
The water can be poured out of the opening at the tip of the Watercone, pictured below, into a container or drunk directly. The water is purified through the condensation as if it were undergoing a single-stage distillation process.
About 1.6 litres of drinking water a day can be obtained by using this invention.
The Watercone is made from hard-wearing, unbreakable Bayer Makrolon polycarbonate with an anti-UV coating, and has a guaranteed working life of at least five years.
Augustin came up with the functional design on the basis of practical specifications.
Tests in the BMW wind tunnel showed that the Watercone could cope with wind speeds of up to 55km/h without any problems, which means it is largely unaffected by weather conditions.
