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phys.org has an article on a new solar powered water desalination system.
Through a combination of thermal, electrical and heat exchange, the result is pure clean drinking water through the power of the sun. Specifically, Desolenator maximizes the solar radiation that hits the surface area of the system to boil water to get a yield over 15 liters of water per day. Solar panels typically convert only about 15 to 18 percent of the solar radiation that hits them into energy, but Desolenator also harvests the heat that would otherwise be lost and directs this to heat the salt or polluted water.
Desolenator will desalinate water at a lower cost per liter, [they] said, than any system at this scale available on the market today. But what about other drinking water and desalination technologies on the market? The Desolenator team said that existing solutions are not viable. CEO of Desolenator, William Janssen, said that "A massive 97 percent of the world's water is salt water and our plan is to tap into this valuable and available resource to disrupt the global water crisis in an unprecedented way. The process is called desalination and today whilst 0.7 percent of the world's water comes from desalination, existing technology is expensive, inefficient and disproportionally drains 0.5 percent of the world's global energy supply."
The Desolinator homepage has more detail, including links to an indiegogo campaign which is raising funds for scaling up the prototype to production scale. This device is also covered at optics.org.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 10 2014, @04:37PM
What happens today if the well dries up? If the well pump breaks? Or, for that matter, if a pump, dam, or pipe breaks in a city water supply? Or if a water tower or pumping station fails along the way?
People don't die. You make the thing have some redundancy and you keep some spare parts handy.
As you pointed out, this thing provides enough water for about eight people. That's a hell of a large family for one residence by US standards, but I don't think that's where these are intended to be deployed. At least not such a small model. And if it is, it's probably going on a farm, not some city apartment. Might very well need enough water for eight people or more (farmers tend to have larger families; if not they probably at least have some extra workers) plus maybe some animals, maybe even irrigating crops...they'd need a LOT of these. Or you put a bunch of them in a cluster in some village in Africa, or maybe one per residence would make sense there. Or there's always the possibility that *this is just a freakin' prototype and they intend to scale up once they get it working!*
Also, I don't quite see the point of comparing mass produced Chinese electronics to a one-off prototype. OF COURSE the mass produced stuff is going to be cheaper! But your system is going to lose a ton of energy as heat. Energy that this new prototype system is specifically designed to capture. If these things start being mass produced they'll almost certainly beat your MacGuyver dehumidifier approach. Especially since you haven't explained who's going to be going out and periodically dunking these wet blankets in the ocean... :)