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Portable solar desalination – ideal for developing countries

Scientists are turning salt water into drinking water using solar power The world needs this. Science Alert BEC CREW 27 APR 2015 By inexpensively turning salt water into drinking water using sustainable solar power, a team from MIT in the US has not only come up with a portable desalination system for use anywhere in the world that needs it, but it’s just won the 2015 Desal Prize – a competition run by USAID to encourage better solutions to water shortages in developing countries.

In order to win the $140,000 prize, entries had to demonstrate how their invention not only works well, but is cost-effective, environmentally sustainable, and energy efficient. And the MIT researchers teamed up with US-based manufacturing company, Jain Irrigation Systems, to do just that.

The team’s invention works by using solar panels to charge a cache of batteries that power an electrodialysis machine that removes salt from the water and makes it perfectly drinkable. David L. Chandler explains for MIT News:………

They’re now hoping to expand their field tests to rural communities in developing countries, in the hopes that they can set them up as irrigation systems in small farms. “A solution with the potential to double recoverable water in an environment where water is becoming more precious by the day could have a huge impact,” environmental and civil engineer Susan Amrose from the University of California at Berkeley, who was not involved in the research, told MIT News. Sources: MIT News, Popular Science http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-turning-salt-water-into-drinking-water-using-solar-power?utm_content=buffer4a3b6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

May 13, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, decentralised