MIT Unveils Portable, Solar-Powered Water Desalination System

An anonymous reader writes "A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Field and Space Robotic Laboratory has designed a new solar-powered water desalination system to provide drinking water to disaster zones and disadvantaged parts of the planet. Desalination systems often require a lot of energy and a large infrastructure to support them, but MIT's compact system is able to cope due to its ingenious design. The system's photovoltaic panel is able to generate power for the pump, which in turn pushes undrinkable seawater through a permeable membrane. MIT's prototype can reportedly produce 80 gallons of drinking water per day, depending on weather conditions."

Comments

80 US gallons

[MichaelSmith]

Thats 300 liters. Maybe enough for ten people if you are careful. Or a hundred people if you only need drinking water to keep them alive.

Re:80 US gallons

[afidel]

FTFA 24 of them will fit on a C130 and provide water for "more than 10,000 people", so I'm thinking more like 500 people per large unit and that's under ideal conditions. That's as opposed to a more traditional unit about the size of a cargo container that can do 200k gallons a day or enough for 40-50k people. Personally I think for large scale disasters it makes a LOT more sense to drop 2 of those and two fuel/generator sets and supply 10x more people with fresh water since every cargo flight counts.