More Efficient Water Purification Technique

Clean water is vital to life here on earth, however, current techniques of water purification are just not that efficient. Fortunately, a team of MIT engineers built and invented a more efficient system, similar to the previous technique of boiling water, and then cooling the vapors, but instead, the water would be vaporized by direct contact with a so called 'carrier gas' and the vapors would be condensed and cooled in cooler water. The team claims that this new system requires far less energy than other common humidification dehumidification, or HDH, desalination processes. The project was designed with the goal of creating a water purification process that's energy efficient, cheaper, and smaller so that developing countries can produce clean water if clean water is something they are lacking ("Such as in Southern India - that have limited fresh water but abundant seawater"). As it turns out, the process is not only really effective for this purpose but also for 'cleaning' water from natural gas wells. Natural gas wells tend to have a sufficient amount of water stored in them but the water is much more saltier than salt water. The MIT developed HDH process is much more effective in purifying the water than other common systems due to the fact that their system's efficiency remains unchanged independent of how salty the water being treated is, whereas with other membrane filtered systems, the efficiency will change depending on the salt levels of the water. The MIT team left their system running for weeks, producing 700 liters of clean water a day using barrels of water from natural gas wells. By increasing the size of their system by two or three times, they'll be able to produce somewhere between 1200 - 2400 liters a day, enough water for a small village. The MIT team expects to see the technology around within two years or so.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130205131754.htm