Desalination

Dozens of water-harvesting pods are set to be deployed along the sea floor off the coast of California as the United States ramps up its first subsea desalination project. The effort is expected to produce 60 million gallons (227 million liters) of fresh water per day.

Elon Musk dropped in on the 10th world Water Forum in Bali, Indonesia, and outlined a plan to solve humanity's growing water scarcity crisis. "The potential for solving any given water issue is very good," he told the assembled dignitaries.

Contrary to elementary school science class, it turns out that heat may not be necessary to make water evaporate. Scientists at MIT have made the surprising discovery that light alone can evaporate water, and is even more efficient at it than heat.

The James Dyson Award is an international competition to encourage students to get creative to solve the world's pressing problems. The national finalists have been announced for 2021, showcasing ideas that help people and the environment.

Engineers at Virginia Tech have developed a new, more efficient solar still design. Inspired by mangrove roots, the "synthetic tree" mimics the natural process of transporting water up through roots and stems into leaves.

Water scarcity is one of humanity’s most pressing problems. Now, engineers at Caltech have developed a system that can tap into two sources to produce drinking water, by purifying dirty water during the day and collecting droplets from fog overnight.

Desalination is an important technology that may help expand the world’s supply of drinking water. Now, engineers in China have demonstrated a new, relatively simple design for a solar still with a high efficiency and low cost.

While reverse osmosis is a relatively energy-efficient form of seawater desalination, it is nonetheless made less efficient by a problem known as biofouling. A new membrane coating, however, could address biofouling like never before.

Clean drinking water is a need that’s going unmet for many people. A new study has used a metal-organic framework (MOF) to filter pollutants out of seawater, generating large amounts of fresh water per day while using less energy than other methods.

Desalination is an important technology that may help unlock more drinking water, and now two independent teams have developed new types of solar-powered desalination systems using very different mechanisms.

One opportunity for improvement when it comes to water desalination tech lies in the materials used for filtration systems, with scientists now putting forward a wood-based alternative to the plastic-based membranes currently in use.

The search is very much on for new water desalination technologies that can get the job done more efficiently. Scientists in Melbourne have put forward one rather promising solution, developing a new kind of system that heats up and purifies water using only the power of the Sun.​