[LUM#2] A Sea to Drink
Turning seawater into drinking water using an environmentally friendly and cost-effective process is the challenge taken on by researchers and students at Polytech and Montpellier Engineering.
Access to drinking water is a major challenge for millions of people around the world. And global warming isn’t helping matters: according to UN experts, the world is expected to face a 40% global water shortage by 2030. Yet water covers 70% of the Earth’s surface… in the form of seas and oceans. Undrinkable? Perhaps not.“Since the 1950s, we’ve known how to turn saltwater into freshwater using intensive desalination processes,” explains Marc Héran, a professor at Polytech and a researcher at the European Membrane Institute (IEM). The problem: desalination plants consume enormous amounts of energy.“Most of that energy comes from oil; from an ecological standpoint, this is not sustainable.”
Choose solar energy
The solution? A desalination unit powered by solar energy. Called Dunetec, this innovative technology is being developed by researchers and students at Polytech in collaboration with Montpellier Engineering.“Using solar energy, we heat seawater to cause it to evaporate and then condense. The end result is fresh water,”explains Jean Pierre Mericq, a researcher atIEM professor at Polytech. A simple principle but a real technological challenge:“We had to optimize the evaporation process to obtain as much fresh water aspossiblewhile using a minimum of energy and taking up as little spaceas possible,” explains André Chrysochoos of the Mechanics and Civil Engineering Laboratory, who also teaches at Polytech.
A dozen students from various programs at the engineering school helped tackle the challenge.“This is a cross-disciplinary project that requires expertise in water management as well as in modeling, electronics, and data processing,” the instructors note. This collaboration has resulted in a prototype that is currently being tested in Port-la-Nouvelle.
A local solution to a global shortage
Next step: offering this technology to regions with high levels of sunshine and access to the sea. The initial target areas are southern Spain and the Greek islands.“A desalination unit should be able to meet the drinking water needs of a village of 200 people,” explains Laurent Trémel, president of Montpellier Engineering, who highlights one of Dunetec’s advantages: ease of use.“Maintenance and upkeep can thus be handled independently by local communities.”
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