Unlimited Fresh Water: Can MIT's Breakthrough Save Us?

This video is an exploration into a resent rabbit hole I went down. I read about MIT's new desalination breakthrough on Reddit, and needed to learn more! The topic of desalination is an important one that is only becoming more critical and could be a lifeline for huge area of the world. As well as looking at the breakthrough, this video also touches on classical methods (multi-stage distillation and reverse osmosis) and a case study of where this could be used, Kiribati.

Credits:
Producer: Ryan Hughes
Research: Sian Buckley and Ryan Hughes
Video Editing: @aniokukade and Ryan Hughes
Music: Joris Šimaitis

/// Key Sources ///
Breakthrough:
Kiribati Lenses:
IPCC Report:
Salt Water Brine Issues:
Jones et al. The state of desalination and brine production: A global outlook

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:10 Standard Desalination
2:56 Case Study
6:20 Problems to Solve
8:49 MIT System (Inspiration)
10:10 MIT System (Operation)

#engineering #desalination #breakthrough

[ZirothTech]

If you see any other interesting engineering projects that you want me to make a video on, please let me know. This one was really interesting to explore!

[CertifiedSkank]

It’s crazy how desalination is a problem financially, but maintaining wars around the world is perfectly within our budget.

[annoloki]

The hyper-salinity issue isn't down to the method used, but the amount you use it. It's the same amount of salt left over that has to be returned to the ocean. Yes, the trick is to dilute it rather than dump it highly concentrated in one big go, and doing this where there are natural ocean currents to circulate it will give the best results.

[wehttamgtrekce]

11:42 if you want to find out how it works. This guy really tried my patience with his preamble.

[hotrodchevy]

I did a Project for my High school science class(which was 30 years ago) and all i used was 2 glass bottles 1 painted Black and the othe clear. I place the black one lower then the clear bottle and placed the clear bottle in the shade and the black bottle im the sun and connected them with a tube. The water in the black bottle was heated and water vapors evaporated and collected in the cooler clear glass bottle. I used nothing more them 2 glass bottles, some black paint, a small piece of tubing, some salt water and the Sun shining above us.

[charlesplewes]

This would be great for off shore sailboats and motor boats which use "water makers" to produce fresh water. These units are reverse osmosis devices but they use a lot of power which is a problem for boats running on solar.

[saahilforever]

8 minutes into the video and i still don't have any idea how this MIT technology works

[AtollSurfer]

I live in Kiribati and I was on Banaba during the drought
And we are are tying to facilitate a small drill rig for simple wells;
Love your article, accurate, too.
The question is : when will it be available ?

[tutirawhanau]

@Ziroth As a kid I tried making a clear dome with reflective sides that focused sunlight onto a floating hot-plate which was washed by wave action to clear the salt residue. I was soundly discouraged by people that knew what they were talking about. I also thought that with cunning alternating reflective and non-reflective tubing the water vapour could be transported a considerable distance from the coast, then at the journey's zenith, allowed to precipitate and flow to a reservoir. This episode rekindled all that happy philosophising. Thank you.

[kiwibob]

Modification of an existing technique for harvesting salt from sea water could also provide fresh water using solar energy. With this technique salt is extracted by allowing sea water into ponds, then sealing them off. Over time the water evaporates leaving salt behind.
I envisage having a central pond containing sea water, surrounded by a moat for collecting fresh water, and the whole thing covered with a transparent dome. Energy from the sun evaporates the water in the central pond, which then rises and condenses on the dome, before running down into the moat. Water is extracted from the moat and salt from the pond.
Occasionally the central pond would have to be allowed to dry out completely to allow for salt removal, so more than one setup would be required for continuous production. Due to evaporation rates this method may not provide sufficient water for urban use, but it could be used to gradually turn arid areas into fertile land.

[Trahloc]

edit: as @javierititin mentions Ziroth does mention the original work around 11:10 and I failed to pick that up. Original comment left for history as I still feel the focus should have been on the advancements over the years vs just the promises made in 2019/2020:

It's been nearly 4 years since they released that paper. I was hoping for more up to date information than what came out in 2020.

[josephhellstern]

Jesus I'm 10 minutes in and you still haven't explained how their system works that's why I clicked on your video I don't need a lecture about rising sea water

[JoeSmith-cywj]

We had an experimental desalination project on town land near the shore. It used only solar to evaporate and distill seawater from a shallow black polymer lined ponds. I never did learn the results or prospects from the project. It lasted about four years.

[RandomSmith]

Keep in mind that if freshwater is extracted from salt water in a system that only has an inlet, the salt concentration will increase until the solution can no longer hold the salt at which point it will clog the system unless that saltier solution is taken out via some mechanism like an outlet pipe or other method. One use for an outlet pipe could be a salt production plant but you would need certain amount of land to further evapourate to solid salt and sea ports to allow you to ship it out.

[FusionDeveloper]

The question is always, can you scale it up and it still be effective?
Many times things can work fantastic on small scale, while being impractical, insanely high maintenance, very expensive to scale up to provide for a city.
It's like the difference between setting rules for your house and setting rules for a country.
Requiring everyone to clean their room at a certain time and go to bed by a certain time and so on, may be optimum for your home and have you living a near-perfect life, but it can't work for an entire country.
This is the issue many people don't understand when they invent a tiny elegant low power or minimal power, cheap form of solving a problem.
You can get a sheet of plastic and a bucket, a rock, dig a hole, let condensation drip into the bucket or or put a plastic bag around the branch of a tree and collect water.
These are simple, cheap practically free ways to get water, but you can't practically scale this for providing water for a city.

[EPeltzer]

The headline of this video is all about MIT's process. But you don't get to this until about 11 minutes into the 15 minute video. Now I think Kiribati is a worthy and interesting subject but so are the thousands of other places that need desalinated water. And do we really need to rehash at length the other methods of desalination on every single video about new desalination innovations? You can't just let people look up the thousands of other videos that explain all that? Very tiresome all in all.

[sinisamilisavljevic]

Back in early 80s my idea was something else:
Build big cone higher than 12 meters above the sea surface (make it 15, for example), with the open bottom dipped in the sea.
Conical shape should allow the remaining salt to fall back to the sea, so, the inner surface of the cone might be covered with Teflon.
At the top of the cone vacuum pump would pull the vapor out, and push it through pressurized pipe system down.
The valve at the exit of the pipe would keep the pressure inside and condense the vapor, raising its temperature with the pressure.
The pipe would be spiral, long, and integrated into the cone wall to give the heat back to the water inside the cone.
Building the cone is more expensive, but it completely removes the need for the expensive membranes, which should all together be cheaper in the long run.

[DAVID-ionj]

Lots of ideas work in the lab under controlled conditions. Scaling it up for real world usage is the roadblock. Usually cost and or reliability/maintenance prevents it's adoption.

[johnhenson]

This could be a game changer for Australia.The Great Artesian Basin contains about 65 million gigalitres of water, or the equivalent of 130, 000 Sydney Harbours! The water is contained within layers of porous rock (aquifers), held in place under pressure by layers of impermeable rock.
The interior where the basin is located is the iconic landscape Australia is known for, kangaroos and red dust. When it does rain the desert blooms, so there is nothing wrong with the soil. Its not sand even if there is a place called the Great Sandy desert. The MIT finding could open up a huge breadbasket. The Artesian basin is replenished by rainfall along the western flank of the Blue Mountains where the capping impermeable rock comes to surface. The water takes a million years at 1m/year to arrive. This does mean a permanent reliable water supply covering more than 1.7 million square kilometres. (Australia is a big place and the basin represents only 22% ) Cloud cover varies between 53% and 93%, it is not scorching hot all the time, and when it rains, it rains. The MIT finding could dramatically change the world's food supply.

[padysrini]

Can someone clarify -

1. Due to the tilt, the salt keeps circulating and due to high density will go back to the sea.

2. The second unit gets salt water both from the first unit and the sea.