MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids the salt-clogging issues of other designs. Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun. In a pap
      • zaz969@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Wouldn’t nestle themselves benefit from this tech so they can stop catching flak for using local dried out water sheds that are probably harder to get water from than this?

        • Zron@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          1 year ago

          They’ll buy out this, use it to produce water at bargain prices, and charge twice the price for that water because it’s “green”

          They’ll then sell it back to the places they’ve been stealing from for decades, and call it charity. Rubes will eat it up as nestle turning a new leaf, and the shareholders will take in more billions of dollars off the suffering of families.

          • zaz969@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Nah you’re absolutely right, my optimism needed to be taken down a peg

      • HubertManne@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        all you guys live in an area with a lot of salt water conveniently avaialble or do you figure the taps will switch to salt for the new fridge filters? also does it get any other gross stuff out besides salt or do you have to prefilter the salt water for non salts stuff.

        • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          From the article, its essentially a solar powered distillation device. Since it’s distilling the water you wouldn’t have to worry about other contaminants, they would all be left behind with the salt. Of course there’s nothing wrong with running it through a reverse osmosis system but you’ll probably want to add minerals back into the water if you were to do anything to it.

  • UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago

    "When seawater is exposed to air, sunlight drives water to evaporate. Once water leaves the surface, salt remains. And the higher the salt concentration, the denser the liquid, and this heavier water wants to flow downward,” Zhang explains.

    Not to be a downer but it sounds like it’s going to kill all wild and plant life in the area its used. The leftover salt is left in the same area, not only making it harder for desalination in the future and making it too salty for anything to live in the area. Brine pools are death traps and these just seen like brine pool makers.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      82·
      1 year ago

      If the brine was used for salt production. That would offset the effects to the local environment. As salt and water are being removed.

      • UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        I don’t think you realize just how much salt that’s going to be. Plus the brine they get afterwards isn’t just pure salt. It has contaminates including sea life. So there’s a lot more process to making usable salt.

        Also, these seem generally cheap to produce so the chances of smaller cities and vilages to obtain one is pretty high. So even if salt was able to easily able to be gathered from this process, there’s going to be a lot of excess salt lying around.

        Desalination seems great on the surface, but until we have a solution for brine it’s going to be another technology that will only hurt us in the long run.

    • hobovision@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      This is a huge problem with all desalination of sea water, and why desalination cannot be a sustainable primary water source, even with free energy.

      We need to close our water systems such that waste water is not cleaned just enough to be dumped into rivers and oceans. We need to recycle the fresh water we have. Urban wastewater takes much less energy to purify than sea water and produces more pure water with less untreatable waste.