Researchers at MIT have developed a groundbreaking solar-powered desalination system that requires no extra batteries and could provide drinking water at low cost. This innovative technology harnesses the sun’s energy to desalinate brackish groundwater, addressing the growing need for sustainable clean water sources, especially in remote and underserved communities. The system’s ability to directly and efficiently use solar power without relying on battery storage represents a major step forward in renewable water purification. Desalination and renewable energy technologies are key to addressing global water scarcity.
How to Make Drinking Water from Sun?
Engineers at MIT have designed a solar-powered desalination device that closes the gap by harnessing energy when the sun is shining and storing it for later use. The system increases the desalting as it gets more sunlight, and adapts instantaneously to rapid changes in light conditions — for example, when a cloud passes.
Such design enables the system to facilitate optimal use of solar energy and produce a considerable amount of clean water regardless of its availability. Most importantly, the system does not need external batteries or additional power supply, making it a low-energy high-throughput solution (and therefore well suited for remote off-grid communities). They’ve already demonstrated a community-scale prototype in New Mexico, and claim to have achieved 94 percent efficiency (factoring energy used by the facility itself) at producing up to 5,000 liters of water daily even on cloudy days.
Flexible batch electrodialysis for desalination revolution
This is not the first time this team attempted to desalinate water — they previously developed a “flexible batch electrodialysis” process. Reverse osmosis and electrodialysis are the two main technologies for brackish groundwater desalination. Rather than using reverse osmosis technologies, requiring a constant power input, the researchers aimed to create an electrodialysis system that are able to adjust to the dynamically changing nature of renewable energy resources for example photo voltaic.
The new design’s chief innovation is better response time: The system can now change its desalination rate between three and five times per second. In this “flow-commanded current control” system, the technology is able to closely align its power demand with available solar energy, and operates without the need for battery storage. The system tracks the output of solar panels in real time so that it can match its production to weather conditions and make efficient use of renewable energy to produce clean water from varying-quality feedwater.
Delivering Clean Water to Underserved Communities sustainably and affordably
The scientists hope that this new, battery-less renewable system could cheaply serve the fresh water needs of more population centres inland, where seawater and grid power are scarce. They view brackish groundwater as a significant, if underused, reservoir of future potable water supplies when surface and fresh water sources become overextended in many places around the world.
The team aims to conduct more expanded trials and eventually deploy the system on a city-wide or even municipal scale, bringing totally solar-powered drinking water to large populations. This technology could address a critical, global challenge – providing affordable clean water to some of the world’s 800 million people without access to reliable drinking-water sources by eliminating the need for batteries and grid power. This new approach could be a great leap in revolutionizing the way water is produced globally and with time may make clean water accessible to everyone from rich to poor, irrespective of their demographics.
