In The World: Drinking water, from sunshine
As water and fuel remained scarce in the weeks following the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, one resource that relief teams could have used to help prevent dehydration literally surrounds the Caribbean island: the ocean. Although systems that remove salt from saltwater, or desalination systems, have existed for decades, they are typically large-scale installations that require lots of energy to operate. As bottled water was given the highest priority in terms of airborne relief supplies in Haiti, what relief teams needed were small, portable, self-contained desalination systems that could turn seawater into drinking water without using exterior electrical power.A team from MIT’s Field and Space Robotics Laboratory (FSRL) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering has designed a solution: a solar-powered desalination system that could be rapidly deployed in crisis situations to produce drinking water. The portable system could also be used in remote areas where supplying energy and clean...