Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers may have opened the door to a major change in the way we produce drinkable water. This change comes with a small, low-cost desalination device that could make it easier for water-stressed regions to get potable water.
The new device was outlined in a research paper published on Joule last month. According to this article, the small device is both low-cost and scalable, making it an excellent option for regions with access to salt water that are currently experiencing water shortages.
Everyone has probably noticed that the summer months are becoming increasingly hotter, especially as climate change and global warming continue to severely affect our planet. Part of the problem with rising temperatures is that important freshwater resources are drying up. Moreover, these water resources are already facing the problem of overuse, and engineers are starting to look for alternative ways to provide water to people in need.
This new low-cost desalination device could help turn the tide by giving us access to the incredible amounts of water found in Earth’s oceans. While there are many different desalination devices available today, they are often prohibitively expensive. For example, a proposed facility in Mexico has a cost of approximately $5 billion. Additionally, such devices (at least on a scale that would provide water to hundreds of thousands of people) require incredible amounts of heat.
Herein lies one of the reasons for the great importance of the low-cost desalination device developed by engineers at MIT and China. The new device uses sunlight to help desalinate water. This eliminates the need for any external power source, powered by electricity, and engineers say that when enlarged to the size of a bag, it could produce up to a gallon (about 3.79 liters) of water per hour.
When you scale this device to the size of a factory, as you can imagine, much more significant amounts of water can be provided. Of course, scaling the device this way requires more science and math, as it relies heavily on a similar process called thermohaline, which occurs when water naturally circulates in the ocean in response to increased heat.
When water is exposed to air, sunlight causes the water to evaporate, leaving its salt behind. As this salt becomes more concentrated, the water becomes heavier and wants to flow downwards. This allows the water to reject the salt, purify it and turn it into drinking water.
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