{"id":173441,"date":"2023-10-04T10:24:57","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T15:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging"},"modified":"2023-10-04T10:24:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T15:24:57","slug":"passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging","title":{"rendered":"Passive Desalination Discovers How To Avoid Salt-Clogging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Saltwater is plentiful, but no good for drinking. Desalinization is the obvious solution, but a big problem isn\u2019t taking the salt out, it\u2019s where all that leftover salt goes. Excess salt accumulates, crystallizes, collects, and clogs a system. Dealing with this means maintenance, which means higher costs, which ultimately limits scalability.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/MIT-Solar-Desalinization-01-PRESS_0.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" data-attachment-id=\"624267\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2023\/10\/02\/passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging\/mit-solar-desalinization-01-press_0\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/MIT-Solar-Desalinization-01-PRESS_0.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"600,600\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{'aperture':'0','credit':'','camera':'','caption':'','created_timestamp':'0','copyright':'','focal_length':'0','iso':'0','shutter_speed':'0','title':'','orientation':'1'}\" data-image-title=\"MIT-Solar-Desalinization-01-PRESS_0\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging2.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/MIT-Solar-Desalinization-01-PRESS_0.jpg?w=600\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/passive-desalination-discovers-how-to-avoid-salt-clogging2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that engineers at MIT and in China have succeeded in <a href=\"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2023\/desalination-system-could-produce-freshwater-cheaper-0927\" target=\"_blank\">creating a desalination system that avoids this problem<\/a> by intrinsically flushing accumulated salt as it is created, keeping the system clean. And what\u2019s more, the whole thing is both scalable and entirely passive. The required energy all comes from gravity and the sun\u2019s heat.<\/p>\n<p>To do this, the device is constructed in such a way that it mimics the <a href=\"https:\/\/oceanservice.noaa.gov\/education\/tutorial_currents\/05conveyor1.html\" target=\"_blank\">thermohaline circulation<\/a> of the ocean on a small scale. This is a process in which temperature and density differentials drive a constant circulation and exchange. In the team\u2019s system, this ultimately flushes concentrations of salt out of the system before it has a chance to collect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saltwater is plentiful, but no good for drinking. Desalinization is the obvious solution, but a big problem isn\u2019t taking the salt out, it\u2019s where all that leftover salt goes. Excess salt accumulates, crystallizes, collects, and clogs a system. Dealing with this means maintenance, which means higher costs, which ultimately limits scalability. The good news is [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}