MIT scientists have developed a solar-powered water purification system that turns brackish water into drinkable water in abundance and at low cost.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Jiao Tong University in Shanghai have published a paper titled "Multitage Solar distillation with thermohaline convection tolerant to extreme salinity" that can make a big difference in reducing water production costs. Because it doesn't need electricity to work.
Their device creates circular currents of water known as small eddies, similar to large thermohaline circulation in the ocean. This circulation combined with the sun's heat causes the water to evaporate, leaving the salt behind.
"When seawater is exposed to air, sunlight causes the water to evaporate,"
explains Lennan Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT's Instrumentation Research Laboratory
.When the water leaves the soil, the salt remains. And the higher the concentration of salt, the thicker the liquid, and this heavy water flows down.
We can use this property to drop the salt by simulating this kilometer-wide event in a small box.
The scientists used a small, thin box that effectively absorbed the sun's heat. The box is divided into top and bottom. Water can flow from the upper half, the roof is covered with an evaporation layer, which heats the sun's heat and causes the water to evaporate through direct contact. The water vapor then enters the bottom half of the can, where the cooling layer turns it into pure drinking water.
After the researchers loaded the entire box into a large empty container, they attached a tube to the bottom half of the box and filled the container with salt water. The water is naturally pumped into the box through the pipe, the tilting of the box combined with the heat energy of the sun causes the water to spin as it flows. The small eddies help the water to contact the upper vapor layer and circulate the salts instead of settling and freezing.
Other ideas for making sunlight disappear are currently being tested by other groups, but the MIT researchers say their new system has a high yield of water and a method of desalination.
If the system can be scaled down to a small container, they say it can produce 4 to 6 liters (1 to 1.5 gallons) of potable water per hour and last for years before needing replacement parts. With this size and efficiency, the system can produce potable water at a lower cost than tap water.
The expandable device can easily provide enough drinking water to meet the daily needs of a small family. It can also provide self-sufficient coastal communities near seawater.
So what do you think about a solar powered desalination system? Do you think this salty water from the Gulf of Mexico seeps into the Mississippi River because of the drought and theoretically helps the people living in Louisiana with their drinking water? Let us know in the comments below.
Read more. The rise of solar energy in the US
: new data publishedby the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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