#desalinizes

[reasonsforhope]

Scientists have developed a new solar-powered system to convert saltwater into fresh drinking water which they say could help reduce dangerous the risk of waterborne diseases like cholera.

Via tests in rural communities, they showed that the process is more than 20% cheaper than traditional methods and can be deployed in rural locations around the globe.

Building on existing processes that convert saline groundwater to freshwater, the researchers from King’s College London, in collaboration with MIT and the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy Systems, created a new system that produced consistent levels of water using solar power, and reported it in a paper published recently in Nature Water.

It works through a process called electrodialysis which separates the salt using a set of specialized membranes that channel salt ions into a stream of brine, leaving the water fresh and drinkable. By flexibly adjusting the voltage and the rate at which salt water flowed through the system, the researchers developed a system that adjusts to variable sunshine while not compromising on the amount of fresh drinking water produced.

Using data first gathered in the village of Chelleru near Hyderabad in India, and then recreating these conditions of the village in New Mexico, the team successfully converted up to 10 cubic meters, or several bathtubs worth of fresh drinking water. This was enough for 3,000 people a day with the process continuing to run regardless of variable solar power caused by cloud coverage and rain.

[Note: Not sure what metric they're using to calculate daily water needs here. Presumably this is drinking water only.]

Dr. Wei He from the Department of Engineering at King’s College London believes the new technology could bring massive benefits to rural communities, not only increasing the supply of drinking water but also bringing health benefits.

“By offering a cheap, eco-friendly alternative that can be operated off the grid, our technology enables communities to tap into alternative water sources (such as deep aquifers or saline water) to address water scarcity and contamination in traditional water supplies,” said He.

“This technology can expand water sources available to communities beyond traditional ones and by providing water from uncontaminated saline sources, may help combat water scarcity or unexpected emergencies when conventional water supplies are disrupted, for example like the recent cholera outbreaks in Zambia.”

In the global rural population, 1.6 billion people face water scarcity, many of whom are reliant on stressed reserves of groundwater lying beneath the Earth’s surface.

However, worldwide 56% of groundwater is saline and unsuitable for consumption. This issue is particularly prevalent in India, where 60% of the land harbors undrinkable saline water. Consequently, there is a pressing need for efficient desalination methods to create fresh drinking water cheaply, and at scale.

Traditional desalination technology has relied either on costly batteries in off-grid systems or a grid system to supply the energy necessary to remove salt from the water. In developing countries’ rural areas, however, grid infrastructure can be unreliable and is largely reliant on fossil fuels...

“By removing the need for a grid system entirely and cutting reliance on battery tech by 92%, our system can provide reliable access to safe drinking water, entirely emission-free, onsite, and at a discount of roughly 22% to the people who need it compared to traditional methods,” He said.

The system also has the potential to be used outside of developing areas, particularly in agriculture where climate change is leading to unstable reserves of fresh water for irrigation.

The team plans to scale up the availability of the technology across India through collaboration with local partners. Beyond this, a team from MIT also plans to create a start-up to commercialize and fund the technology.

“While the US and UK have more stable, diversified grids than most countries, they still rely on fossil fuels. By removing fossil fuels from the equation for energy-hungry sectors like agriculture, we can help accelerate the transition to Net Zero,” He said.

-via Good News Network, April 2, 2024

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Desalination in Action

Desalination -- the removal of salt from water -- is an important process for providing the fresh water we need, but it's quite expensive in terms of energy. In this Practical Engineering video, Grady demonstrates small-scale versions of the two most common methods for purifying water: distillation and reverse osmosis. (Video and image credit: Practical Engineering) Read the full article

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Faced with the world's impending freshwater scarcity, a team of researchers in Singapore turned to solar steam generators (SSGs), which are emerging as a promising device for seawater desalination. Desalination can be a costly, energy-intensive solution to water scarcity. This renewable-powered approach mimics the natural water cycle by using the sun's energy to evaporate and isolate water. However, the technology is limited by the need to fabricate complex topologies to increase the surface area necessary to achieve high water evaporation efficiency. To overcome this barrier, the team sought design inspiration from trees and harnessed the potential of 3D printing. In Applied Physics Reviews, the team presents a state-of-the-art technology for producing efficient SSGs for desalination and introduces a novel method for printing functional nanocomposites for multi-jet fusion (MJF).

Read more.

[stormbluestories]

i don't think these grow beds can grow coral

also the potatoes are VERY GOOD food but also they spoil very fast

conclusion i will continue to be reliant on tube coral and very reliant on salt

[wumblr]

well. research i saw stated by a crank 10 years ago

[supplyside]

Sydney seawater desalination plant

[ralfmaximus]

We seem to have hit on a really good one here, thanks to a collaboration between MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU).  I couldn’t even cram all the benefits of this thing into my diary title.  

This device breaks the record for rate of fresh water production from seawater by a solar device, and as awesome as that is, it’s actually kind of a charming side note.  The bigger breakthrough is that the device can keep running up near this rate for a long time without getting fouled by salt accumulation, and it does this by emulating natural processes that occur in the sea.  That cuts costs by about 10x compared to typical solar desalination, making the cost of the fresh water it produces comparable to that of tap water.

This is real, as legit as MIT and SJTU... which is pretty legit.

One of the onrushing 21st century crises is fresh water, but if we can convert sea water cheaply & efficiently then that particular crisis is solved!

[probablyasocialecologist]

It’s worth taking a step back to emphasise just how extraordinary the lack of access to water is. There is not a shortage of water. Sure, regionally speaking, there are shortages, but not at a global level. It also doesn’t take a genius to get access to water or move it from A to B. The UN estimates it costs $60 to $70 per year per person to get the infrastructure in place for potable water and sanitation to everyone. A sum that pales in comparison with that spent bailing out the banks in 2008, for example. So it’s in that context that we should look at these new technologies. Desalination of water has been around for a long time. You boil salty water, it’s that simple. However, what has happened over the past 20 or 30 years or so, is desalination is increasingly seen as an environmentally friendly, safe and cheap way to get almost an abundant supply of water. Sea water is in great abundance, it is not owned by anyone for the time being, you can suck up as much as you want of it and not pay for it. Of course, desalination at scale is not ecologically friendly. Desalination takes a gargantuan amount of energy. It’s true that the costs per unit for energy production have gone down, but it’s still very energy intensive. It also takes significant infrastructure to suck the water from the sea, which has an adverse impact on marine wildlife and ecologies, as well as producing highly saline and toxic leftover waste. There’s no way to recycle this so it often ends up back in the sea or stored on land, in barrels somewhere. These technologies are also often used to defuse or, more accurately, sidestep political disputes. Take Spain, for example. Water access and distribution is difficult in the south of Spain, while people from Catalonia or Aragon generally speaking don’t want to share their groundwater with those from other regions. Desalination is an easy answer. Let’s get to the sea, extract free water, there’s no contestation. This all falls under what I’ve called a ‘productionist logic’, we need to get more of the stuff to carry on doing what we are already doing. This perpetuates a logic of reproduction that does not consider the structures of demand: who’s using it, under what conditions etc… It helps us escape considering the contradictions of current demands.

[irradiate-space]

Casey Handmer is at it again

Casey Handmer — who you may recall from his fanfic "the Martian but with Starship" and his NASA-redefining proposal "space science but with Starship" and his Mars terraforming-for-cheap proposal and his carbon-negative carboniferious-fuel company Terraform Industries — now proposes to rehydrate the Salton Sea, refill the Colorado River, and end water shortages in the area with the power of solar energy.

All he needs is seed capital, some bulldozers, an environmental impact statement, and maybe a passport, and he'll be set up to be the water baron of the American Southwest, minting low-cost water from the oceans.

[acheronist]

MYYY BABY MY BABY YOU'RE MY BABY SAY IT TO MEEEEEEE

[reasonsforhope]

“MIT researchers have developed a portable desalination unit, weighing less than 10 kilograms, that can remove particles and salts to generate drinking water.

The suitcase-sized device, which requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel, which can be purchased online for around $50. It automatically generates drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards. The technology is packaged into a user-friendly device that runs with the push of one button.

Unlike other portable desalination units that require water to pass through filters, this device utilizes electrical power to remove particles from drinking water. Eliminating the need for replacement filters greatly reduces the long-term maintenance requirements.

This could enable the unit to be deployed in remote and severely resource-limited areas, such as communities on small islands or aboard seafaring cargo ships. It could also be used to aid refugees fleeing natural disasters or by soldiers carrying out long-term military operations...

[For their first field test,] Yoon and Kwon set the box near the shore and tossed the feed tube into the water. In about half an hour, the device had filled a plastic drinking cup with clear, drinkable water.

“It was successful even in its first run, which was quite exciting and surprising. But I think the main reason we were successful is the accumulation of all these little advances that we made along the way,” Han says.

The resulting water exceeded World Health Organization quality guidelines, and the unit reduced the amount of suspended solids by at least a factor of 10...

One of the biggest challenges of designing the portable system was engineering an intuitive device that could be used by anyone, Han says.

Yoon hopes to make the device more user-friendly and improve its energy efficiency and production rate through a startup he plans to launch to commercialize the technology.

In the lab, Han wants to apply the lessons he’s learned over the past decade to water-quality issues that go beyond desalination, such as rapidly detecting contaminants in drinking water.” -MIT News, 4/28/22

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Scientists create DNA hydrogel-based, solar-powered evaporation system for highly efficient seawater desalination

Minerals as well as freshwater can be obtained by desalinating seawater with solar power facilities for the sustainable development of human civilization. For instance, hydrogels have shown great power for solar-powered water evaporation potential, although the highly efficient and specific target extraction method remains to be expanded. In a recent report published in Science Advances, Hanxue Liang and a team of researchers at the college of chemistry, and materials science in China, describe the process of highly efficient seawater desalination and the specific extraction of uranium with smart DNA hydrogels. The DNA hydrogels promoted the evaporation of water, and the uranyl-specific DNA hydrogel exhibited a high capture capacity of 5.7 mg per gram for uranium from natural seawater due to rapid ion transport driven by solar-powered interfacial evaporation and high selectivity. These developments could enable easy-to-use devices suited for future seawater treatment.

Read more.

[huntquinlan]

i am SO glad that more people are talking about how fanon elain / elain in e/riel is a blatant self-insert proxy