MIT solar distiller in 2020 demonstrated a gallon and a half of fresh water in one hour using a square meter of close-quarter membrane distillation process. So

MIT solar distiller in 2020 demonstrated a gallon and a half of fresh water in one hour using a square meter of close-quarter membrane distillation process. So, 10,000 sq meter of this baby could pump 150,000 gallons of fresh water over a ten-hour solar shift. Seems like the secret sauce is 1.2cm (or is that 80mm) separation between diffuser plates thus taking advantage of solar heating/condensation/collection in one area. Of course, there remains an collection issue of brine discharge which could be removed gradually instead but in same but 3-peat manner (down to 2-3 permille, or 0.2-0.3% salinity level.) At any rate, this MIT method has leapfrogged the passive solar method ahead of reverse osmosis (RO) method by quite a bit, in terms of energy required to extra fresh water. RO still holds the insurmountable lead in base (non-fluctuating) water output rate. https://news.mit.edu/2020/passive-solar-powered-water-desalination-0207 https://news.mit.edu/2020/passive-solar-powered-water-desali...