Drinking water doesn't need to be boiled to kill bacteria, it only needs to be pasteurized. This solar pasteurizer made with a hole in the ground and a couple sheets of plastic will purify large quantities of water.
"The lack of clean drinking water is a major health problem in the developing world. To reduce this health risk ways of producing clean water at an affordable cost are needed, and people need to be educated about germs and sanitation, lest they accidentally re-contaminate their clean drinking water. Recently, several of us at the University of California at Berkeley have attacked the first of these requirements. ... In this article we describe a new low-cost device that pasteurizes water."
"For those not familiar with the pasteurization process, if water is heated to 149? F (65? C) for about 6 minutes all the germs, viruses, and parasites that cause disease in humans are killed, including cholera and hepatitis A and B. This is similar to what is done with milk and other beverages. It is not necessary to boil the water as many people believe. Pasteurization is not the only way to decontaminate drinking water, but pasteurization is particularly easy to scale down so the initial cost is low."
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