Small Yucatan Village Produces Clean Water with eSun Energy System Jennifer Chu - MIT News
go to original October 17, 2013

In a small village deep in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula — a day’s drive from any source of clean, drinkable water — researchers from MIT are testing a system that purifies water with the help of the sun.

The relatively inexpensive system consists of several modest photovoltaic panels, a large tank to hold purified water, and a telephone booth-sized shed that houses the heart of the system: pumps, filters and membranes, and computers that enable the system to run itself.

The solar panels, programmed to maximize the capture of sunlight, power the system’s pumps to push brown, brackish well water through semiporous membranes — a process known as reverse osmosis. The membranes filter clean, drinkable water into a large tank, leaving behind salts and other heavy minerals. Even on a cloudy day, the solar-powered setup can produce about 1,000 liters of drinking water — enough to supply the village’s 450 residents.

The team, led by Steven Dubowsky, a professor of mechanical engineering and of aeronautics and astronautics, has operated the system for the past four months — a field test that, if successful, may be replicated in other parts of the world where fresh drinking water is a scarce and costly resource. The work is being done with the support of the Kellogg Foundation and the Fondo Para La Paz, a Mexican organization.

“There may be 25 million indigenous people in Mexico alone,” Dubowsky says. “This is not a small problem. The potential for a system like this is huge.”

Read the rest at eSun Energy

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