Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Researchers Create New Desalination Technology

Researchers at Rice University in Houston say they have created new technology which dramatically improves the ability to turn salt water into fresh drinking water, using only the sun. The university said that its new effort--created under a National Science Foundation project--uses engineered light-harvesting nanoparticles, embedded in a porous membrane, which use sunlight to generate steam, dramatically reducing the energy required in desalination. Rice said the technology is the first major innovation from the Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT). Rice said its desalination technology is unlike current desalination technology, where more than half the cost of operating a water distillation plant is for energy.