MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids the salt-clogging issues of other designs. Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun. In a pap
"When seawater is exposed to air, sunlight drives water to evaporate. Once water leaves the surface, salt remains. And the higher the salt concentration, the denser the liquid, and this heavier water wants to flow downward,” Zhang explains.
Not to be a downer but it sounds like it’s going to kill all wild and plant life in the area its used. The leftover salt is left in the same area, not only making it harder for desalination in the future and making it too salty for anything to live in the area. Brine pools are death traps and these just seen like brine pool makers.
This is a huge problem with all desalination of sea water, and why desalination cannot be a sustainable primary water source, even with free energy.
We need to close our water systems such that waste water is not cleaned just enough to be dumped into rivers and oceans. We need to recycle the fresh water we have. Urban wastewater takes much less energy to purify than sea water and produces more pure water with less untreatable waste.