The process of distillation is one of the oldest ways to obtain drinking water from seawater, where the water is heated to the boiling point and then cooled steam purified in the condensation pipes, but the problem of that method is very energy consumption, which spends about half in the process of boiling water, but a team of researchers Of the US Rice University have developed a new technology that is not only able to reduce the amount of energy needed, but completely dispense electricity.
In the technology developed by the team financed by the Nanot water treatment center, the cold water and hot water are separated by a thin film. The water vapor is drawn through the membrane from the hot side to the cold with the salt filter. The process uses much less energy than the process Distillation because the water needs to be heated only and not malleable.
To further improve the efficiency of the system, researchers at the Nuit Center have combined commercially available membranes and black carbon nanoparticles that convert the energy of sunlight into heat, which means that the membrane itself is heated so that it does not require a constant supply of hot water, .
Because the system does not need energy to heat the water, the energy requirements do not exceed the need only to operate a pump to push liquid water during the process, and as such, the whole system can operate two panels of solar panels.
During their tests, researchers found that the efficiency of their device doubled if the sunlight was concentrated. The density was as high as 17.5 kW / s when a lens was used to focus the sun 25 times, said the researcher at the University of Rice, Quellin Lee, adding that water production rose by about six liters per square meter per hour.
Because the system is composed of modules that can be installed, places such as remote communities, offshore oil platforms and disaster relief sites will be able to know their consumption rates for drinking water per hour and the installation of the necessary desalination units.
The technology can easily use existing membranes used in more than 18,000 water purification plants worldwide rather than distillation technology.