BOSTON – Researchers have made a spectacular breakthrough after making a device that can change seawater into clear, drinkable water at the press of a button.
The exciting technology can rid the water of salt molecules, bacteria and viruses by zapping it with electricity. This means there is no need for replacement filters or high-pressure pumps, which commercially available desalination units usually use. It provides a huge boost to those remote locations that have little or no access to drinking water.
A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a desalination unit that was able to generate water exceeding World Health Organisation (WHO) quality standards without these items.
The two-stage process removes both dissolved and suspended solids from the water, and generates 0.3 litres of drinking water per hour straight from the sea in a tested prototype.
Jongyoon Han, professor of electrical engineering at MIT, said: ”Right now, we are pushing our research to scale up that production rate.
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