Water Desalination Study
Freshwater supply is essential to a thriving society. In the past century, with the water consumption rate continually growing, more regions around the globe have experienced water shortage. In response to water scarcity, many countries rely on desalinization plants to provide fresh water out of brackish or the most abundant ocean water. For this project, students in ME412 are expected to understand the water desalination process through two parts of work. For the major part, each team will design, analyze, build, and test a simple desalinator based on a thermal cycle. The objective of the design is to maximize the freshwater production from a given amount of salt water (~35g/L), while cost and weight are also considered as a factor in evaluation. For the secondary part, each team will choose a specific type of water desalination system and conduct a review on its design, technology, performance, and energy analysis as well. Due to the special situation this semester, each team will test their device at home, prepare a short demo video, and then present the design, test results and thermal analysis of their device to the whole class on the presentation day.
