Blog post: swansont: Don't Forget the Gin

"So basically you add dirt and salt, to make the water cleaner?" I asked him.

 

"Right," said Pierce laughing, "It's not exactly intuitive."

 

Perhaps not so intuitive to the average person, but it's a process that may be more familiar to makers of wine, where bentonite is commonly used to clarify wine of impurities.

…

Schwab and medical student Alexander Harding discovered that adding a half a Persian lime to a two-liter bottle of water reduced the disinfection time in the sun from six hours to a half an hour. That's just about the same amount of time it takes to boil water, and much more energy efficient.