Posted on 04/04/2018 9:37:30 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
Finding a cheap and effective water purification process would have global implications.
A research team from the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering has developed a new cost-effective and compact technology that combines gel-polymer hybrid materials to improve the purification process for drinking water.
The new materials possess both hydrophilic—an attraction to water—qualities and semiconducting, or solar-absorbing properties. This enables the hydrogel to produce clean, safe drinking water from virtually any source, whether it's from the oceans or contaminated supplies.
“We have essentially rewritten the entire approach to conventional solar water evaporation,” Guihua Yu, associate professor of materials science and mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement.
The new hydrogel-based solar vapor generator uses ambient solar energy to power the evaporation of water for effective desalination.
Existing solar steaming technologies used to treat saltwater involve an expensive process that relies on optical instruments to concentrate sunlight. However, the nanostructured gels require far less energy and only need naturally occurring levels of ambient sunlight to run, while also being capable of significantly increasing the volume of water that can be evaporated.
“Water desalination through distillation is a common method for mass production of freshwater,” said Fei Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher working under Yu’s supervision, said in a statement. “However, current distillation technologies, such as multi-stage flash and multi-effect distillation, require significant infrastructures and are quite energy-intensive. Solar energy, as the most sustainable heat source to potentially power distillation, is widely considered to be a great alternative for water desalination."
Water vapor is generated with the hydrogels under direct sunlight and then pumped to a condenser for freshwater delivery.
The researchers successfully tested the hydrogels on water samples from the salt-rich Dead Sea, reducing the salinity significantly in the samples after putting them through the hydrogel process, achieving levels that met accepted drinking water standards outlined by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“Our outdoor tests showed daily distilled water production up to 25 liters per square meter, enough for household needs and even disaster areas,” said Yu. “Better still, the hydrogels can easily be retrofitted to replace the core components in most existing solar desalination systems, thereby eliminating the need for a complete overhaul of desalinations systems already in use.”
According to the United Nations, 30,000 people die each week from the consumption and use of unsanitary water, mostly occurring in developing nations.
The researchers also found that the hydrogels could be used to filter out a number of other contaminants found in water.
Yu also said the new technology could be commercialized and has filed a patent application for the hydrogels.
Finally there’s a droid that understands the binary language of moisture evaporators.
I was thinking about making a Chet99 joke, but I see this might be a different topic from pitbulls or free energy. /s
Reduced energy requirements is good. What about the cost of consumables?
Apparently, other than the hydrogel eventually wearing out, there aren't any.
This has to have the U.N. on a mixed emotion roller coaster ride.
They already think the world is way over populated.
The questions are:
Does anyone remember the guy that kept posting about the free energy gizmo test updates and how they kept generating steam? I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but this title really reminded me of that guy that kept posting that junk here; and before that, the Chet99 tomes about pitbulls. ;)
Thank you, OP, for giving me a fun FR reminiscence from a couple years ago.
Probably not...at least not yet. More than likely it hasn't hit their radar screens.
4. How does it purge itself of the residue and waste matter?
2. How much water can a filtration unit process before performance degrades to the point it requires replacement?
3. How much does it cost to replace the unit?
All good questions. What little I have read about hydrogels is that they are not terribly expensive to produce.
The only figure I can locate quickly is for small scale production and is $1500/ton. That sounds expensive, but a ton is a LOT of square meters of hydrogel.
Nothing saying this hydrogel can't be engineered into a comparable portability.
Of course Chet99 turned out to be right, and new incidents of people killed or maimed by pitbulls have continued unabated since his departure.
That is pretty much a picture perfect example of vindication - complete with a shrinking cadre of total nutburgers who continue to foam at the mouth about nothing being wrong with the breed.
That’s my primary question.
Like new battery technologies, I see “world-changing breakthrough!” announced every couple months, for decades. Rarely any follow-through worth noting.
I remain hopeful, but pessimistic.
That could be a life saver in regions in Africa. If only they could figure out how to get them electricity.......
Well, for the evaporative part of the process, apparently it generates its own (or a suitable equivalent).
Wouldn’t a solar tracker focusing a lens or a parabolic reflector with a concentrated beam on a kettle do the same thing ?
So they've optimized evaporation.
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