Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water

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 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.

Credit: Jintong Gao and Zhenyuan Xu

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[bodhidharmafpv]

Looking at the basic water distillation tech of the membrane and thermohaline cleansing of salt from the membrane it looks viable, and I figure a business and industry can be founded on it. I think it is revolutionary and active systems might be able to get production rates of fresh water much higher per square meter. One might do this by preheating the water going into the cells with the heat pump condenser unit using recovered heat and by solar. Likewise, air entering the evaporation spaces under the membrane can be heated both to heat the seawater on the other side of the membrane and increase the amount of vapor the warm air can hold, aided by blowers moving moisture laden air to the condenser unit, which can be compact and with the warm dry desert air coming in it should increase production. One might also concentrate solar power on the panels.
That flat black solar collector might be a form of carbon that conducts heat and absorbs solar energy, or it might simply be a coated aluminum plate. The point is the idea is so good (it was iteratively improved by them and others) and the paper so comprehensive it allows engineers to begin developing and testing a wide variety of possible systems of almost any scale.
The point is with a dozen 700watt solar panels running the condenser and pumps only during daylight efficiency doesn't matter that much and the condenser can be separated from the generating panels. Make the panels the right size to fit in a shipping container and design it so the membrane can be changed periodically, and you should be good to go. Any uninhabited desert costal area with a population center within a hundred miles is your target market. With a modularized 40 foot shipping container system that can be expanded a lot, sounds like a business. After you build a 1 meter test rig to experiment with, then some prototype panels to test and show off to potential customers. Capital is required, but there are many wealthy Arabs with a real obsession about fresh water.
I guess I and a few others think it is one of the more important ideas and potential products to come out in a long time, in that can seriously improve the lives of lots of people and help to address a looming climate problem, drought. I do believe we will be hearing more about this over the next year or two.

Remember we are already building solar PV arrays of millions of square meters now. A 1 million square meter facility on a desert coast or a few kilometers from it using an active system powered by solar panels might produce 10 or even 20 liters of fresh water an hour per square meter. That's 10 to 20 million liters a day, perhaps a half a billion liters a year. Unlike electricity, water can be stored, and it can be transported by solar panel covered canals hundreds of miles to an inland city and the system can deliver both fresh water and power. Wastewater can be recycled or used after treatment to grow plants. Maybe the city will grow an urban canopy to cool things down and improve the quality of life with its wastewater. What would a desert city in a warm place look like in 20 years if they plated the right trees today? It might just transform how a lot of cities look, what was once barren would be lush and green with plenty of shade from the sun.

[TahoeJones]

"Could" produce?
It will or it doesn't.
Bla Bla maybe.

[sacredfrequencies]

I can clean 3.5 barrels of water per minute using Jet engine