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Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water (news.mit.edu)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun.

In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.

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.

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00360-4

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 year ago (62 children)

Article doesn't mention what the unit does with the salt waste.

I support this 100%, but desalination presents a unique problem: what do we do with all the salt? Maybe the unit uses it for something, but otherwise it just miniaturizes a problem that we're already working on.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Don’t you just dump it back in the sea? Diluting should make this a minor issue right?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (7 children)

That's what I always thought, but the local effects of hypersalinated water can be terrible for any nearby life

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is mostly a scale dependent issue. The size of this unit means it’s probably not a concern unless you ended up making thousands of them.

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