A potentially significant breakthrough in water desalination technology could dramatically improve access to clean fresh water worldwide.
One of the key challenges with traditional desalination processes is the fact that seawater evaporates at a lower rate than pure water.
This means that processes are energy intensive and often leave a large carbon footprint.
But researchers at the University of South Australia have developed an approach that flips this dynamic on its head, achieving seawater evaporation rates that are almost 20% higher than pure water.
The team was able to produce these results by adding inexpensive, common clay minerals into a floating photothermal hydrogel evaporator.
The approach is “highly convenient and cost-effective,” said Professor Haolan Xu, materials science researcher at the University of South Australia. “[It] could be easily integrated into existing evaporation-based desalination systems.”
The performance of the hydrogel evaporator was maintained even after several months of immersion in seawater, further enhancing its potential for practical, cheap implementation.
There are more than 18,000 desalination plants across 150 countries worldwide. An estimated 300 million people rely on desalinated water for some or all of their daily water needs.
The team’s research findings were published in the journal Advanced Materials.
