From seawater to drinking water, with the push of a button
Edit: I wrote out the comment below criticizing the efficiency of this device, when compared to reverse osmosis RO desalination (100x less efficient).<p>However, they’re not trying to be more efficient than RO devices, they’re trying to be more compact, portable, and avoid the need for filters.<p>They’re solving for a different problem than I was measuring them against.<p>In my race to criticize, I overlooked those key details.<p>I still think my comment is worth reading to learn about the efficiency differences but I guess that measurement is not important for the viability of this technology.<p>Original criticism below:
———————<p>I’m skeptical about how practical this actually is.<p>While it’s refreshing to see a drinking water solution that isn’t based on inefficient dehumidifier technology, this still seems impractical.<p>From the demonstration video, their portable ~50 watt solar panel took 30 minutes to get a few ounces of drinking water.<p>It looked like a cold winter day, so let’s be generous and assume the panel only produced 15 watts of power during those 30 minutes.<p>Let’s also be generous and say they got 5 ounces of water.<p>That means they produce 1 ounce of water for every 3 watts.<p>That’d be 333 ounces per kWh.<p>To put that into perspective, a desalination plant produces more than 100x that much.<p>Yes, there is lots of additional infrastructure to consider with a traditional desalination plant but It’s not like this solution wouldn’t require the same complexity to scale up.<p>I don’t remember the cost of dehumidifier drinking water “solutions” but I think this is <i>slightly</i> more efficient than those horrifically inefficient solutions.