Scientists have discovered a way to desalinate water using only solar energy. This could be a major breakthrough in desalination techniques.
At the moment ti is very expensive to desalinate water. The desalination occurs in desalination plants, of which there are 18,000 in 150 countries . The plants boil the water, water vapour is being captured and condensed to produce distilled water. A huge amount of energy is needed to boil the water, half of the plant's cost comes from the energy requirements.
The new reaserch was led by the Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) at Rice University in Texas and the new method is called Direct solar desalination. It is a game changer for the 1 billion people who lack access to clean drinking water.
This is an off grid technology which could provid sufficient clean water for family use in a compact footprint, and it can be scaled up to provide water for large communities.
The technique involves something called membrane distillation combined with engineered nanoparticles, which can convert sunlight into the heat. Adding these to the membrane makes it heats up by itself, so vast amounts of energy are not needed to turn the water hot. The technology is called nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation .
To prove that the concept works, the team used an NESMD chamber measuring the size of three postage stamps, and a few millimeters thick. They managed to get a water production rate of about 6 liters per meter squared per hour from their set-up.
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Source: http://www.newtcenter.org/
http://www.iflscience.com/technology/scientists-have-used-solar-energy-to-turn-salt-water-into-fresh-water/