MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids salt-clogging issues of other designs.
More details in their paper here
Wonder if this is the most reposted article on all of Lemmy?
If I can get a dollar everytime I see an article like this…
If I can get 10 dollar every time this article is reposted…
The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water.
But can it be scaled up even more? Like cubic meters per hour?
I just keep waiting for them to actually produce the small suitcase sized product. It sounds like a excellent option for me, as opposed to the $4-5k desalinators that are the options now.
but why “if”?
if they’re making this research, why wouldn’t they “scale up to the size of a small suitcase” and get rid of the “if”?
That’s just how research works most of the time. The experimental setup required to build a working prototype and prove the initial hypothesis is always going to be larger and more complex than a mass market appliance. If that appliance ever gets built depends on a huge number of factors too. If the process scales as expected, how complex the device is to produce and if a company thinks that it can make money on it. The researchers, meanwhile, are probably more worried about their next grant funding.
My guess: They don’t have the money to do so.
Does it come with or without micro plastics?
It will certainly comes with a preposterous amount of salt to deal with. That’s a critical limiting factor with desalination.
ib4whatdowedowiththesalt
Sprinkle it on roads during the winter and have it wash back into the ocean, whence it came?
We already have plenty of salt for that.
Plus the places that are good for solar power don’t tend to need salt in the winter…
Hmm, good points. Though if it is produced as a “waste” product, is there a chance it could be cheaper/greener than our current sources of salt?
Maybe - but desalination comes up a lot and nobody seems to have identified an option yet.
If you produce too much you’ll crash the price of salt. And it’s so cheap I suspect most of the cost is in processing and shipping. I’m finding costs for road rock salt in the US of $60-$150 per US ton.
Putting it back in the ocean isn’t a bad idea per se. The problem is when it’s put back in one spot which increases salinity locally. If they distributed it into the ocean it would be fine. But the added cost makes the whole process more expensive and you can’t get a headline saying your new process is “cheaper then tap”.
