4 ms·
This is incorrect. The statistic of 5.8 liters per hour is actually liters per hour per square meter. A 10x10cm panel would produce 58ml per hour in full sun.
by sacred_numbers 4y ago
This is incorrect. The statistic of 5.8 liters per hour is actually liters per hour per square meter. A 10x10cm panel would produce 58ml per hour in full sun. If you instead put a solar panel with 20% efficiency and used the electricity for reverse osmosis you would produce about an order of magnitude more water per square meter. This may have lower capital or operational costs, though, and it is certainly more decentralized, so it could be useful in some situations.
- abrax3141 4y agoWhat’s the capital/op cost of r.o.? Isn’t it just a pump and a membrane?
- abrax3141 4y agoJust for clarity, is that a 10x10cm solar panel?
- sacred_numbers 4y agoWhat I mean is that a solar panel of any given size will produce electricity that can be used to desalinate an order of magnitude more water than a device like this of the same size. The device in this article desalinated 5.8 liters per square meter per hour in full sun, which means this 10x10cm device actually desalinated 58ml of water in an hour. A 10x10cm solar panel would produce enough electricity in an hour in full sun to desalinate approximately 600ml of water using reverse osmosis. A solar panel that was 1 square meter would generate enough electricity to desalinate about 60 liters of water in an hour in full sun.