Dailydirt: Fresh Drinking Water

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Potable water is an extremely valuable resource, even though most people take it for granted. Not too many people are concerned about "peak water" yet, but there are some folks looking into the feasibility of towing icebergs to places where clean water is scarce. There are numerous ways to get clean water, but most of them are fairly energy intensive (and thereby expensive). Here are just a few notable projects for purifying water.

• Saudi Arabia is planning to build the world's biggest desalination plant, capable of processing 158 million gallons of water in a day, by 2018. Exporting fresh water could be Saudi Arabia's next valuable product. [url]
• Dean Kamen (the inventor of the Segway) has been working on a device called a Slingshot that purifies water and generates electricity. Over a billion people don't have access to clean water or electricity, so that's a lot of people who might benefit if this device works out economically. [url]
• A desalination battery uses electricity to separate sodium chloride from sea water. This technology isn't quite ready to generate tons of cheap, potable water yet, but it's a nice first step towards more cost effective ways of making sea water more useful. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: dean kamen, desalination, potable, slingshot, water