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Solar-powered desalination system requires no extra batteries

(news.mit.edu)
130 points bentocorp | 4 comments | 17 Nov 24 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.656s | source
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bastloing ◴[18 Nov 24 13:06 UTC] No.42171982[source]▶
That's great news! Now if they can solve the same problem with sea water, California, Arizona and Nevada can reduce their reliance on the Colorado river and grow more crops. It is only a matter of time before it's solved. Great work, MIT!
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1. ttyprintk ◴[18 Nov 24 13:58 UTC] No.42172316[source]▶
It’s a great application, but electrodialysis on seawater takes more power—-so much that distillation is competitive. The use-case chosen is remote freshwater wells which suffer from naturally-occurring arsenic. I can only think of a few others which can’t have heavy batteries.
replies(3): >>42172368 #>>42172738 #>>42173598 #
2. ttyprintk ◴[18 Nov 24 14:07 UTC] No.42172368[source]▶
Here’s a state-of-the-art portable prototype with pretreatment: 0.3 l/h at 20W: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31243621
3. terramars ◴[18 Nov 24 14:46 UTC] No.42172738[source]▶
This isn't really accurate, they're targeting industrial wastewater yes but they are working with and have tested brackish water up to several thousand TDS. They had a working EDR system for drinking water installed in Gaza until relatively recently and several in India as well. I'm also skeptical they can make it work with seawater, but it absolutely works with undrinkable brackish water in many other cases too.
4. ◴[18 Nov 24 15:57 UTC] No.42173598[source]▶