Too much salt leftover? The Morton company would suppress that./s
There are several ways to desalinate seawater. The problem is to do so quickly and economically. Heating seawater then cooling and capturing the condensate takes too much energy to be really efficient. Perhaps these membranes, if they can be produced cheaply and will stand up to a large volume of water, are the answer. The problem still remains of disposing of the slurry of salt and other minerals. Currently most desalination plants return the sludgy, salty leftovers to the water supply, which is highly destructive of the environment.
Getting the water separated out is only one-half the cost battles for desalinization. The other half has been dealing with the brine collected in the process. Yes, getting the first step’s costs down will help (as they will be with more efficient filters from more efficient materials), but in the long run the second problem - dealing with the leftover brine - needs much improvement as well.
Sounds like you don’t have to boil the water as you do in distillation, so it would require a lot less energy.
Duh!!! Well yeah! .. of course .. if you use a nanofiber membrane!
Heard about electrospinning back in the 1990’s, it is really interesting technology which is largely relegated to medical textiles such as wound dressings. We’ve done it where I work but decided not to enter the market for which the fabric was intended.
Its basic problem is that it makes fabric very slowly compared to traditional techniques. If they could spin the fibers using the “islands-in-sea” technology you could get similar diameter fibers (we’re talking nanofibers with both technologies, often less than 100 nanometer fiber diameter).
Guess they used electrospinning because it is inexpensive to set up. Hopefully they can scale this thing up and everyone with a boat on the ocean could carry the device in case of emergency.
I don’t trust any writer who doesn’t know there is no “z” in desalination.
“Water from one side is heated and allows water vapor to pass through the membrane, which is then condensed on the other side. The process is called membrane distillation.”
I don’t get it. Why do you need a membrane if you’re collecting water vapor, which is already distilled (no salt)?
But boiling water takes a lot of energy.
I have read that Great Britain has had a reward for anyone who can turn salt water into fresh water at a very, VERY low cost. So far no one has collected it.
Wonder if this will be it.