Getting fresh water from salt water can be difficult to do at any kind of scale. Researchers have developed a new method of desalinating water that significantly reduces its cost. [via Electrek]
By mimicking the thermohaline circulation of the ocean, the researchers from MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University were able to solve one of the primary issues with desalination systems, salt fouling. Using a series of evaporator/condenser stages, the seawater is separated into freshwater and salt using heat from the sun.
Evaporating water to separate it from salt isn’t new, but the researchers took it a step further by tilting the whole contraption and introducing a series of tubes to help move the water along and create eddy currents. These currents help the denser, saltier water move off of the apparatus and down deeper into the fluid where the salt doesn’t cause an issue with the device’s operation. The device should have a relatively long lifetime since it has no moving parts and doesn’t require any electricity to operate.
The researchers believe a small, suitcase-sized device could produce water for a family for less than the cost of tap water in the US. The (paywalled) paper is available from Joule.
If you’re curious about other drinking water hacks, check out this post on Re-Imagining the Water Supply or this previous work by the same researchers.
https://hackaday.com/2023/10/02/passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging/
I was about to post the same comment. After all, duplicate a comment on a duplicated article is fait. Just a tip for writers: click on the tag you are using. ‘Salination’ bring you directly to the above mentionned previous article.
TFA says “scaled up to a square meter, it would produce up to 5 liters of drinking water per hour”
Or a square meter of solar cells can produce 200 watts, enough to run a reverse osmosis system to make 40 liters of drinking water per hour.
MIT’s brand jumped the shark back in Negroponte’s day.
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Because we Have locally Made Bata shoes, better than china sweatshop Nikes. Bwanji from Zambia
Cost of 1m2 of PV + desalination unit + maintenance is likely > 8x the cost of this unit + maintenance.
If space isn’t expensive, this might still be interesting even if not the best efficiency around.
Also, the former doesn’t prevent the later, this unit only need heat, so it can probably run below a PV array as well as long as enough heat is generated to evaporate the expected water.
I seem to recall an article about solar panels over irrigation channels (maybe in India?)
The panels reduced water lost by evaporation, and the water cooled the panels, making them more efficient.
So instead of arguing about having one or the other – why not have both?
This thing can run off the waste heat from the back of a solar panel, so you get 5 liters of water and get to keep that 200 watts for something else.
Blobby Blobby Blobby!
A series of tubes?
You wouldn’t download a liter
It’s not a big truck