How to purify urine with to water bottles and sun light.

Edwood7

Edwood7

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Mar 31, 2010
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You need two plastic bottles for this one.


This one I learned in my desert survival training in the army, It has worked for a lot of the guys, and it good for a self rescue or escape en evasion type scenario when you have to be on the move.

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First step is to urinate in one of the containers. Attach the other bottle to the one with the urine so that they lay almost flat, and wrap the mouths of the bottles together with some plastic (the wrapping some plastic bottles have works well, if you have a lighter you can heat seal the plastic) or duct tape (whatever you have with you) to for an air tight seal.

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Find a place with a lot of direct sun light and burry the empty bottle completely. The heat for the sun will disinfect and evaporate the water content in the urine bottle and it will condense in the empty bottle.

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Very carefully remove the urine bottle and enjoy the water. Even though urine is mostly water it is not that safe to drink directly, it has some waste products in it like sodium, potassium, and trace alcohol if you had a few beers the night before. Your natural kidneys filter does a big job in getting these waste products out.

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This method can also be used to purify any stagnant water you may come across.

Stay safe out there.
 
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Urine is already sterile when it comes out of your body, so this is more of a solar distillation method to separate clean water from the chemicals, right?

Never seen this method before, it looks simple and easy to do compared to other methods requiring tarps & large spaces. Thanks!
 
The thing is you have to keep the bottles leveled sow that there is no cross contamination. That is the actual product of half a bottle worth of urine. That’s about 1/3 full of water from ½ of urine.
 
Edwood7 said:
The thing is you have to keep the bottles leveled sow that there is no cross contamination. That is the actual product of half a bottle worth of urine. That’s about 1/3 full of water from ½ of urine.
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Wow, cool. Great technique, thanks!
 
You could start your own water company, PP Springs. It's a natural, organic solar distillation process. Charge top dollar for that liquid gold!
 
Well they made us drink our urine during training. I don’t recommend it.



We get our desert survival training in “La Laguna Salada” region of Baja California. Bear Grylls actually came to this part of Baja and was stung in the face by a bee and had to be medivact out of there, ha!

 
Ha! Puffy bear:p
Thanks for the tip Edwood; God I hope I never need that one but it's a good one. Can you distill putrid H20 like swamp water with that jig?
 
--J said:
Ha! Puffy bear:p
Thanks for the tip Edwood; God I hope I never need that one but it's a good one. Can you distill putrid H20 like swamp water with that jig?
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If i were hard pressed to drink some stagnant water i would try fitter it and boiled it first, too much thing live in that water and you might be better of making sure. But if it’s an emergency I think this method is better than nothing.
 
thanks for the tip. How long does it take roughly? Does it despend on how hot it is outside? stuff like that.

Bryan
 
This is cool. I'd never seen this before and it makes a lot of sense. But yes, it would also work with muddy or dirty water, even berry juice or crushed plants that you wouldn't want to drink the juice from. Boiling would be a good idea though. But it would give you something to boil.
 
sicily02 said:
thanks for the tip. How long does it take roughly? Does it despend on how hot it is outside? stuff like that.

Bryan
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It depends on where you are, out in the sonorant desert I have a bottle full (about 600ml.) in about 2 hours.
 
This is a neat variation on the SODIS method. I like the SODIS method because it's so simple. Its most obvious weakness of course is that you have to start with filtered water.

Your method, on the other hand, does NOT! And that makes it doubly more effective. Nice technique.
 
Watchful said:
This is a neat variation on the SODIS method. I like the SODIS method because it's so simple. Its most obvious weakness of course is that you have to start with filtered water.

Your method, on the other hand, does NOT! And that makes it doubly more effective. Nice technique.
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It's more of a solar distillation process than solar disinfection. While the UV may be purifying any biological contaminants that entered the urine while passing through the urethra (one bladder-full of urine would not be sterile after leaving the body, generally, because of this). Solar distillation is a common method of obtaining pure water, especially in the desert. You can even urinate into your setup to increase your H2O yield. Mr Wizard did it once too. IIRC, no urine was involved.
 
Jester60 said:
Think this would work with salt water?
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Yep.
I first heard of this method in Les Stroud's book.
It'll work for urine, or salt water.
If you distilled it with this method and then boiled it, you could use just about any water source around.
 
scouter27 said:
It's more of a solar distillation process than solar disinfection.
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Agreed. Great tip from Edwood nonetheless!

The SODIS method though has been used effectively especially in countries like ours (i.e. - the third world).
 
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