Photo credit: M. Scott Brauer
MIT researchers have built a portable solar-powered desalination unit, weighing less than 10 kilograms (22 pounds), that can remove particles and salts to generate drinking water at the push of a button. Since the suitcase-sized device requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, it can be powered by a small, portable solar panel, to make drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards.
While similar systems require water to pass through filters, this unit uses electrical power to remove particles from drinking water, thus eliminating the need for replacement filters and greatly reducing the long-term maintenance requirements. This means that it can be utilized in remote and severely resource-limited areas, like small island communities or aboard seafaring cargo ships. In related news, scientists have managed to turn water into a gold-colored metal.
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This is really the culmination of a 10-year journey that I and my group have been on. 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 Jongyoon Han, senior author and professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE).