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You know those survival straws that let you slurp up pond scum without dying of dysentery? They leave you hydrated but still feeling like a malnourished caveman, and the water tastes awful half the time.
This version has your standard microfilter membrane at the intake end to zap bacteria, parasites,
and whatever else is floating in that questionable stream. Halfway up, there's a sealed, twist-activated cartridge loaded with dissolvable flavor and vitamin pellets—think B-complex, C, maybe some electrolytes and caffeine for that post-apocalypse pep. You prime it before sipping by twisting a dial to set the dose (low for casual hikes, high if you're rationing MREs), then suck away; water flow dissolves a metered amount as it passes through, mixing in the goods without clogging the filter.
Cartridges swap out like shotgun shells, good for 100 liters each, and the whole thing is no bigger than a fat marker pen.
[link]
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[+] But might wanna have the marketing dept come up with a better line than "then suck away". |
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//... good for 100 liters each, and the whole thing is no bigger than a fat marker pen.// |
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Searching online I found "Precision Hydration: Very strong electrolyte for salty sweaters" tablets (mild citrus); 10 tablets to treat 5 litres of water, supplying 1500mg/l salts. The net weight given for 10 tablets is 66g, so the weight per litre is 13.2g
I will consider this a reasonable upper bound for the dosage.
The lowest dosage of tablets in their range seems to be 250mg/l, which manages 7.5 litres for 66g, or 8.8g/l. (Why is it not a sixth? Because most of the weight is flavouring, dispersant (effervescence), binder etc which are presumably held constant.) |
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Therefore, in order to treat 100 litres, the largest cartridge would be over 1.3 kg, and the small dose version 880g. Plus the packaging.
Unfortunately, I think the marketing department may be a little optimistic when they suggest that even the low dose version fits the form-factor of a marker pen. Even a fat one. |
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If you did /just/ the electrolytes- no flavouring, no dispersant or whatever - the low-dose cartridge would notionally be 25 grams to cover 100 litres. That might fit in a reasonable cartridge, although actually regulating the dose over 100 litres might need some finessing, and of course it's not going to stop the water tasting bad. |
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tl;dr Something has to give. The easiest strat. would be to reduce the volume treated by each cartridge. |
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Anything that beats beats scurvy gets my vote. |
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//reduce the volume treated by each cartridge// sp. increase |
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// //reduce the volume treated by each cartridge// sp. increase// |
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Definitely not.
Treating 100 litres requires a cartridge of over 1 kilogram, as I calculated.
If a cartridge 'only' treated 10 litres, say, it would only need to around 100 grams for the solutes. |
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OK I was thinking more like use the same cartridge more dilutedly. |
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Like when you make a pot of filter coffee, but more people turn up, so you "stretch" the grounds by just pouring more and more water through... |
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Those darned kids are making plastics from corn these days, so make the straw itself from slowly-dissolvable flavoured minerals, building in at least [Loris]'s minimum '25g over 100 litres', leading the unit over time to embody [normzone]'s 'stripper' misread. |
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Superior Stripper Sipper, Stripperior Sipper, S-S-Sipper <wanders away mumbling> |
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Single use mode should not be a deterrent to development. |
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