Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdhen | Hacker News Reader

The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water.

This seems like it would be extremely useful if it pans out.

View on HN

scale up to a small suitcase...how small is it now?

… and what is preventing them from scaling up to a small suitcase?

That's a very good question.

We see these articles all the time, and they somehow don't get scaled up. You'd think they'd at least scale this up to the size of a typical rooftop solar panel before issuing a press release. So what's the problem? Uses some expensive material? Hard to fabricate at scale? Doesn't actually hold up in bright sunlight?

Go back and read their previous "breakthrough announcement" from 2020.[1] That has more useful info. That system used some expensive aerogel. The process is a bit clearer, During the daytime it evaporates salt water and condenses the vapor. During the night it back-washes the wicking material. Whether this can actually work with some simple device floating in a pool of salt water is not clear. The experimental systems all have plumbing, pumps, and instrumentation.

If this is for real, please scale it up to at least kiddie-pool size before turning on the PR department.

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2020/passive-solar-powered-water-desali...

these premature announcements always make me think of a little kid desperate for attention to have mom/dad hang their drawing on the fridge. it's cute from a developing child, but as grown as adults, it's just sad really.

oh, you had a clever idea, but can't do anything practical with it? here's your gold star. now go have some milk and cookies and get ready for your nap.

It's a wicked and pervasive problem in academia. Put otherwise capable people in a pathological incentive matrix and this is what happens.

In an ideal world, wouldn't we want people to be showing their work earlier in the process? Inspiring others to join in on the action?

We saw with LK99 the world rally around a promising lead and discover some interesting things very quickly. Why not run these kinds of science/eng research problems like we do open source projects?

Having good desal is an incredibly important problem that should inspire this kind of collective action. It's not super esoteric research.

Show work, fine. Use an article title "Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water" and say nothing about the problems, clickbait.

Instead of a gold star, they probably would like to have some funding.

I'm sure MIT is fine - just looked, they have at least 50 million in leftover revenue from fy2022, and they have ~60 billion in assets.

Or a large suitcase? Or a thousand large suitcases?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com