Solar-Powered Desalination Unit From MIT Can Generate Clean Drinking Water in Just One Push of a Button

Access to clean and safe drinking water may be a life or death issue in emergency cases. However, there is still a tricky problem to solve in terms of logistics and infrastructure to ensure a steady supply of drinking water.

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), led by Jongyoon Han have developed a 10kg portable desalination unit that turns seawater into drinking water.

Better Than WHO Quality Standard

The team described the technology used in the new portable desalination unit as energy-efficient since it uses little energy and can be powered by a small solar panel, according to Uber Gizmo. It ditched the typical technology and methods employed in other desalination units that only made them difficult to operate. The new solar-powered desalination unit is very easy to use.

More so, researchers claim that the water generated from the device impressively exceeds the quality standards of the World Health Organization (WHO). The classic techniques that prevent miniaturization of the whole device are not used in MIT's technology, so it can be deployed in remote and severely resource-limited areas, like small islands or seafaring cargo ships.

As of now, it is not yet available commercially, but the prototype works efficiently. It has set the groundwork and proof of concept for future developments and optimizations of the device. The team also noted that the device can be used to aid refugees fleeing natural disasters or by soldiers carrying out long-term missions.

Senior author Han said that the device is the culmination of their 10-year journey of working and analyzing individual desalination processes to turn them into a box.

No Need For Filter

Study first author Junghyo Yoon explains in a statement in MIT News that commercially available portable desalination units usually require high-pressure pumps to push water to filters that are difficult to miniaturize without compromising their energy efficiency.

On the other hand, the new unit relies on a process that the team pioneered more than 10 years ago called ion concentration polarization (ICP). The ICP process applies an electrical field to membranes to repel positively or negatively charged particles, including salt molecules, bacteria, and viruses, rather than filtering the water.

Then the charged particles are sent into the second stream of water, where they will be discharged. The ICP process only requires a low-pressure pump that uses less energy than the standard desalination techniques to remove dissolved and suspended solids so that clean water can pass through.

But since it does not remove all particles in the first part, the team incorporated a second process called electrodialysis to remove the remaining salt ions. They used machine learning to find the ideal combination of the ICP process and electrodialysis.

The researchers fit the technology into a portable device to further make the technology energy efficient. Most importantly, the team designed the device for non-experts with just one push of a button to launch an automatic desalination and purification process. The device will notify the user once the number of particles decreases to specific thresholds, which signals that the water is now drinkable.

Researchers also developed a mobile application for easier control and to use the device wirelessly to report real-time power consumption and water salinity.

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Check out more news and information on Desalination in Science Times.