Lost at sea? This desalination unit fits in a suitcase | Hacker News Reader

Lost at sea? This desalination unit fits in a suitcase

thenewdaily.com.au

49 pointsthunderbong19 comments

Discussed a month ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31200793 and again 10 days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31417554

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Solar-powered desalination device wins MIT $100K competition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31417554 - May 2022 (149 comments)

From seawater to drinking water, with the push of a button - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31200793 - April 2022 (99 comments)

"So don’t forget to also buy a small portable solar panel. You can get them online for about $70."

The cost of the solar panel is mentioned but not the actual unit? Neither is the amount of water produced in a set amount of time. Good product but weak article.

Looked at the abstract and found: "The portable system desalinates brackish water and seawater (2.5–45 g/L) into drinkable water (defined by WHO guideline), with the energy consumptions of 0.4–4 (brackish water) and 15.6–26.6 W h/L (seawater), respectively." https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.1c08466

It also says the device has a “0.33 L/h production rate,” which is a little less than a 12oz can, so seems like a decent rate to keep one hydrated.

Should keep 4 people well hydrated if it can run all day, would probably keep 10-15 alive for a while until rescue. Half those numbers if it only works when the sun is out.

I'm not one to call a technology revolutionary at the drop of a hat (most of the time it isn't a new technology but instead another website) but this seems world changing if it pans out.

> a little less than a 12oz can

Or exactly a standard 330ml can. :)

Isn't this a prototype, not a product?

I'd like to know if it could be hooked up to use power generated by the ocean current.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31417554

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31200793

...and probably others. It seems like this thing is constantly being touted on HN.

Dear HNers: 99% of the stuff MIT's press office brags about will never make it into the "real world." It either has significant real-world problems, it can't be commercialized because of MIT's commercial licensing terms and fees, the professor tries to spin it off into a business but has no idea how business or manufacturing works, etc.

I think the most interesting part is that this is not a reverse osmosis unit. The feed water passes through an electric field which migrates the charged ions to the sides of the stream, which are discarded and the center of the stream is retained.

This thing looks pretty amazing. Would be a great addition (with accessories) to lifeboats.

Wonder how pricey it will be when commercialized?

There are purely mechanical RO units that weigh less than 5lbs and are used in life rafts

RO units require a lot of maintenance.

If used. For a life raft a short lifetime of active use and long shelf stable lifetime is fine.

Exactly! My point is that the fact that mechanical RO units exist and are small shouldn't detract from the utility of the purely electrical solution in the fine article.

Can this scale? I mean can we build a giant one on the coast of California?

Yes there are already giant desalination plants in the Middle East.[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/climate/desalination-wate...

IIRC California has desalination plants. I remember hearing Catalina has one but only uses it when they absolutely has to.

It's not efficient. At scale, you'd try to be orders of magnitude more efficient.

This is specifically for portability & low maintenace (not needing to keep swapping/handling filters).

If you're on a boat it should keep you alive, with some modest solar. But most everyday consumers have far larger water needs & trying to generate all that desalinated water via this process is not effective.

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