A Small and Simple Plastic Desalination Device

摘要

A simple and small desalination device is being developed for providing fresh water from blackish- or sea-water without any infrastructure except solar energy. More than ten years ago, we developed a 100 kg·day~(-1) solar desalination system using a material of titanium. The price of the device was too expensive. The objective of study is development of domestic device to provide fresh water by solar energy. Decompression and multiple-effect indoor distillation device was developed, which is a cylindrical shape plastic with metal membrane for water boiling and condensing. For decompression, vacuum pump is used. This electricity can be managed by using a battery and photovoltaic cells. It is possible to test four-stage multiple-effect distillation. The best material of the membrane was coated titanium with photocatalytic active treatment by reinforced carbon process. The electric conductivity of fresh water was 7 μS·cm~(-1), which is the value for the level of commercial distilled water.