Photo: Shane Pratt
Researchers have created a novel desalination system that runs with the rhythms of the sun. The MIT team’s solar-powered device adjusts desalination speed to match sunlight variations, maximizing solar energy to produce large amounts of clean water throughout the day. By operating without additional batteries or external power sources, it provides significant cost savings over conventional technologies. The system continuously adjusts flow rate and current to match increasing solar power. The engineers integrated the new control strategy into a fully automated system designed to desalinate brackish groundwater for a small community of 3,000 people. Tested for six months at the Brackish Groundwater National Research Facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the prototype on average used over 94% of the solar panel’s electrical energy to power desalination.
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