CONICET scientists work on the desalination process of sea water for human consumption

Motivated by water scarcity in Caleta Olivia, province of Santa Cruz, a research team led by Adrian Brunini, CONICET scientist at the Unidad Académica Caleta Olivia (UACO, Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral), managed to develop a seawater heater to obtain freshwater. The equipment does not cause damage to the environment and could also work with green hydrogen.

“We tried to find a solution, something that would have an impact on the community,” Brunini explains. He continues: “We began to work on a technology that reproduces the water cycle. It is a thermal and efficient energy that does not require great technological advances to work in a desalination plant.

The research team built a desalination pilot plant that works with burning hydrogen, so it does not affect the environment: “Hydrogen only produces water vapor and that is important because it does not give off any greenhouse gas,” explains the researcher.

The technology mimics the natural cycle of water. “Seawater is heated and put in contact with dry air, by doing this the dry air immediately becomes humid,” explains Brunini. “The air only absorbs the humidity of water, not the salt,” adds the scientist. The following step will be to condense the humidity of the air to recover the resource that was, until then, in the form of steam.

The researcher explains that the equipment has a special thermodynamic design which recovers most of the energy that was used to be recovered. For Brunini, if the production of hydrogen through clean energy -such as solar panels or windmills- is added to this process, it would be possible to speak about a doubly noble circle.

In the future, the intention is to continue improving performance in aspects such as pressure and the incorporation of new prototypes that can contribute to the improvement of technology. For Brunini, technological development is essential to strengthen sovereignty as a country: “We must develop the necessary technology not only to produce hydrogen, but also to use it,” he concludes.