Australian researchers develop method to produce clean drinking water using sunlight

The world still suffers from water shortages and/or water scarcity. A WWF (World Wildlife) shows that about 1,1 billion people in the world do not have access to water, plus a total of 2,7 million people are affected by water shortages during certain periods of the year. With that in mind, the desalination process is seen as a solution to the problem. However, it is still quite expensive. To solve the problem, researchers are working on a way to produce clean drinking water using sunlight.

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The researchers from Future Industries Institute are in the process of developing a way to bring clean, affordable drinking water to millions of people around the planet. Developing countries are likely to benefit the most. Researchers, led by Haolan Xu, are developing a way to produce drinking water using three types of water: seawater, brackish water or contaminated water.

How the project works

The process is capable of providing drinking water for a family of up to four people, with just 1 square meter of water. “In recent years, much attention has been paid to using solar evaporation to create potable water, but previous techniques were too inefficient to be useful in practice.“. Xu highlighted, making it clear that this old technology has been surpassed, and that they will now be able to provide clean water for a fraction of the cost of the old method.

How This New Sunlight Technology Works

The new technology, as it is called, consists of a photothermal structure that is highly efficient. The structure sits above a water source, converting sunlight into heat so that it concentrates on top of the water and evaporates the liquid.

"We have developed a technique that not only avoids any loss of solar energy, but also extracts additional energy from the water, which means that the system operates 100 percent efficiently on incoming sunlight and consumes another 170 percent of energy from the water and the environment".

The project to use sunlight to generate drinking water gains more prominence because it is made of simple and low-cost products. Thus, people from all over the world will be able to use the technique and generate water potable.