Suitcase of Desalination: Turning Seawater into Drinking Water with a Single Button
Freshwater is vital to many lifeforms on Earth
But we are facing a shortage of freshwater because of drought and lack of rain
While we got frozen supplies in the north and south poles, experts advise not to touch them or risk facing irreversible consequences
To fight shortage, desalination came to be
So, how can we make this process more accessible and cheaper?
Scientists have a solution stored in a suitcase
Before we look into that suitcase, let's talk about desalination
If you don't know, it is a process of removing excess salts and other minerals from water
According to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, most desalination processes need feed water to be treated, which produces two streams of water
Treated water becomes freshwater with low concentrations of salts
Brine water has higher salt concentrations
Although we got the tech for desalination, several challenges are super serious
The first is the environmental impact of discharging the concentrate from treated water
Another is the budget which not many nations can handle
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scientists have an offer: a suitcase for desalination
They were able to build a portable desalination unit weighing less than 10 kg
If power is the issue, users can plug in a small, portable solar panel costing $10 online
The team boasts that it can produce drinking water with exceeding scores of the WHO quality standards
"We worked for years on the physics behind individual desalination processes, but pushing all those advances into a box, building a system, and demonstrating it in the ocean, that was a really meaningful and rewarding experience for me," said senior author Jongyoon Han
Published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, scientists solved two major hurdles in desalination processes – filters and high-pressure pumps
The pumps aren't easy to miniaturize, thus they applied a technique called ion concentration polarization, 10 years in the making
ICP uses an electrical field to membranes, and these membranes repel positively or negatively charged particles, including salts and germs
The charged particles are fed into the second stream of water for discharge, leaving freshwater in the first stream
To optimize the process, they deployed electrodialysis modules to eliminate remnants
Enhanced by machine learning, the setup features a two-stage ICP and one round of electrodialysis
They said this minimized power consumption without compromising performance
They tossed the feed tube into the water during beach tests involving different water salinity and cloudiness
Half an hour later, a plastic drinking cup with clear, drinkable water was produced
The prototype model can generate drinking water at 0.3 liters per hour, using only 20 watts per liter
This is possible with a portable solar panel
What's your take on this device?
Is desalination the solution to water supply issues?
Share your thoughts in the comment section
'Till our next video! Thanks for watching!