{"id":8985,"date":"2010-10-15T11:26:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T16:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=8985"},"modified":"2010-10-15T11:26:24","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T16:26:24","slug":"portable-solar-desalination-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/portable-solar-desalination-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Turn Sunlight into Water: the Portable Solar Desalination Plant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MIT's concept of a solar-powered desalination plant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Editor’s note: This post is sustainablog’s contribution to <\/em>Blog Action Day 2010<\/em><\/a>; this year’s topic is water.<\/em><\/p>\n

When island nations experience disaster (think the Haitian earthquake), the victims are often faced with a cruel irony summed up (in a different context) by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Water, water, everywhere,\/Nor any drop to drink.” \u00a0Sure, aid organizations and other countries can deliver bottled water to address the immediate need, but that’s not a sustainable long-term solution; people need regular access to clean drinking water as they’re rebuilding whatever infrastructure existed prior to the disaster.<\/p>\n

A group of engineers at MIT’s Field and Space Robotics Laboratory has been at work on a solution that not only addresses the need for water in these situations, but also the likely lack of readily-available power: an easily portable, affordable solar-powered desalination plant<\/a>.
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Water Desalination That’s Appropriate & Affordable<\/h2>\n

At this point, the team has developed a working prototype that “is capable of producing 80 gallons of water a day in a variety of weather conditions.” They envision a system that<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Would cost about $8000 to construct<\/li>\n
  • That could provide about 1000 gallons of water per day, and<\/li>\n
  • That is sized for rapid deployment, and essentially “turnkey” in its operation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Of course, disaster wouldn’t be a prerequisite for use of such desalination equipment: it would be valuable in any part of the world where clean water and readily-available power were in short supply. And, of course, the team has taken that inevitable question about solar power — “What happens when you don’t have full sunlight?” — into account in their design: the video below demonstrates the system at work on a partly cloudy day in Boston:<\/p>\n