What if solar energy could be used to distill salt water? That’s what engineers at MIT are developing, in a design that not only saves electricity but avoids filter clogging. |
State-of-the-art technology requires around 3.5 megawatt-hours to desalinate one acre foot of seawater.
Cambridge, Oct. 25 (DP.net).– OceanWell, a company testing a design takes advantage of the pressure differential between shallow and deep water to bring the energy requirement down to just over 2 MWh/AF (ref. WC #8). Using filtration technology, the theoretical minimum is 1.2 MWh/AF.
But what if solar energy could be used to distill salt water? That’s what engineers at MIT are developing, in a design that not only saves electricity but avoids filter clogging. Using MIT’s numbers, a one square mile array could produce around 90,000 acre-feet a year of fresh water from seawater. The design also may be able to extract fresh water while releasing only slightly saltier brine, and by avoiding filtration, would avoid any contaminants filters might otherwise introduce.
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