How new desalination technology could save humanity

According to the WHO, about 2 billion people on Earth use fecal contaminated drinking water sources. Since a huge number of people on the planet are forced to drink dirty water, almost half a million people die from diarrhea every year.

In addition, dirty water is the cause of the spread of cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever and poliomyelitis.

Due to global warming and drought, experts suggest that by 2025, half of the world’s population will live in regions where there is a shortage of clean drinking water.

Scientists around the world are looking for solutions to this problem and are developing technologies that will effectively purify seawater and make it drinkable.

One such solution was recently unveiled at Australia’s Monash University, according to a new study, “breakthrough technology will purify water using sunlight”.

These are MOF porous organometallic compounds that should help produce the maximum volume of clean water in record time. Scientists have developed a special MOF with the PSP-MIL-53 index, which has the highest density of matter.

According to the authors of the development, a “teaspoon” of this substance could in theory cover an area the size of a football field. Using MOF like a sponge, researchers have achieved record-breaking water purification efficiency.

Whereas WHO claims that good quality drinking water should have a TDS of less than 600 parts per million (ppm), with their MOF PSP-MIL-53, scientists were able to filter water to less than 500 ppm in just 30 minutes.

At the same time, the initial indicator of water pollution was 2233 ppm.

Researchers estimate that one kilogram of such a substance can make 139 liters of clean drinking water from seawater in a day.

At the same time, MOF filters are easy to clean – just expose them to sunlight and the structure can lose salt deposits in a few minutes.

“Sunlight is the most abundant and renewable energy source on Earth. Our development of a new desalination process based on an adsorbent using sunlight for regeneration provides an energy-efficient and environmentally friendly desalination solution, ”the scientists said.

Scientists say this method of water desalination works much faster and requires less energy than any other, and they plan to present a functional device based on this technology soon.

Given the speed of climate change, commercial companies should start developing such a device as soon as possible.