Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

Kamen’s first idea was to recycle the sterile water, but after consulting with biologists, he realized that there was no way to filter out mechanically what the kidney takes out naturally. “There’s ammonia, urea, all these middle molecules. What the kidney takes out, you just can’t filter.” So if he couldn’t recycle the water, perhaps there was a way to make tap water clean enough for injection. That adventure took a few more years. “Turns out going from potable water to sterile water using filters was impossible,” he explains. “Osmosis membranes don’t work. The gold standard was pure, distilled deionized water, but there were no miniature distillers that could meet that standard.” So Kamen decided to build one. Unfortunately, after doing the calculations, he realized that the amount of electrical power needed to run even a small unit would require rewiring most homes. Next came a crazier idea: build a distiller capable of recycling its own energy. “A couple of years later, we finally got this little box that had 98 percent energy recovery and produced a reasonable amount of sterile water. We tested it with all these different tap waters, and it worked perfectly. It was so good that we didn’t need to use tap water: we could use gray water instead. Then it hit me: if I can make gray water sterile enough for injection with 98 percent energy recovery, why am I trying to optimize a device to produce five to ten gallons a day? That machine could help a few tens of thousands of ...