Design, Technology Innovation's water pipe that that changes saltwater to pure simply by the nature of the plastic. Credit: Design Technology Innovation

Design, Technology Innovation’s water pipe that that changes saltwater to pure simply by the nature of the plastic.
Credit: Design Technology Innovation

When drought grabs hold of a region—as it has in epic proportions in California—desalination seems like an obvious way to get  the freshwater we need for drinking, cooking, and irrigating crops. But the process of removing salt from saline water is pricey, typically costing twice as much as building a reservoir or recycling wastewater.

What if you could flip the process, extracting pure water vapor from saltwater?

That’s the approach U.K.-based Design Technology & Innovation took to develop a new irrigation system that pumps saltwater into underground pipes but only releases freshwater vapor into the soil—the salt remains trapped inside.

What’s the secret? A special kind of plastic dubbed Dutyion.

“We basically stumbled across a plastic with a particular ability to allow water vapor to pass through it, but virtually nothing else,” said DTI’s Mark Tonkin, […]

Read the Full Article