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Gaza Man Invents Solar Powered Water Purification Tank for War-Torn Town

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has left almost 90 percent of the water supply unfit for people to drink. Fayez al-Hindi has devised a homemade water desalinization setup that is helping to solve the water crisis, though, as some Gaza residents face running out of water in mere months. It runs on solar power and a little ingenuity.

Three years of jets bombing the Gaza strip have left the territory’s water infrastructure extremely unstable. Both reservoirs above ground and below have been damaged, so even when it rains, the water is often contaminated, and made unfit to drink. More than $34 million dollars’ worth of damage has been done to Gaza’s water infrastructure.

You would think that such massive-scale damage would mean that the residents are left hopeless, but not with a little sunshine and a desalinization tank. Al-Hindi’s solution to the water shortage in his area was to build a simple tank that separates clean water from salt and pollutants. The tank doesn’t do industrial-strength work, but it makes just enough water for he and his family to drink and cook with daily – about 2.6 gallons. His tank works without the use of chemicals, and simply utilizes the energy of the sun.

His device started getting a few nods, but people were concerned that the distilled water he was creating was not truly clean. Coastal Municipalities Water Utility tested the water from al-Hindi’s invention, and found that it was more than potable. A technician for the utility said the results were, “fascinating.”

It can take years – sometimes decades – for infrastructure to be rebuilt following a war, so al-Hindi will help others in his community build similar solar-powered water distillation tanks so that more people have access to clean water, today.

83 million people currently live in the driest areas of the planet, and more than 783 million people worldwide, are currently living without access to clean water for drinking. More than 2.5 billion simply can’t clean their water properly.

As al-Hindi has said, “Sunshine is readily available in our country, Thank God.” For many suffering water instability due to drought conditions, war, and other natural disasters, his invention could mean the difference between life and death.

Featured image credit: AJ+

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