Interesting news of a new way of getting
drinking water from the winner of an
MIT 100K USD competition:
(their first target market is sailors)...
https://www.nona-technologies.com/
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Solar-powered desalination device wins MIT $100K competition
Nona Desalination is developing a compact water-desalination device that requires less electricity than a
cell phone charger.
Zach Winn | MIT News Office
Publication Date:
May 16, 2022
The winner of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is commercializing a new
water desalination technology.
Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough
drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other
water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight of a case of bottled water and is powered by a small
solar panel.
“Our mission is to make portable desalination sustainable and easy,” said Nona CEO and MIT MBA candidate Bruce Crawford in the winning
pitch, delivered to an audience in the Kresge Auditorium and online.
The traditional approach for water desalination relies on a power-intensive process called
reverse osmosis. In contrast, Nona uses a technology
developed in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics that removes
salt and bacteria from seawater using an
electrical current.
“Because we can do all this at super low pressure, we don’t need the high-pressure
pump [used in reverse osmosis], so we don’t need a lot of electricity,” says Crawford, who co-founded
the company with MIT
Research Scientist Junghyo Yoon. “Our device runs on less power than a
cell phone charger.”
The founders cited problems like tropical storms, drought, and infrastructure crises like the one in Flint, Michigan, to underscore that clean water access is not just a problem in developing countries. In
Houston, after
Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic flooding in 2017, some residents were advised not to drink their tap water for months.
The company has already developed a small prototype that produces clean drinking water. With its winnings, Nona will build more prototypes to give to early customers.
The company plans to sell its first units to sailors before moving into the
emergency preparedness space in the U.S., which it estimates to be a $5 billion industry. From there, it hopes to scale globally to help with disaster relief. The technology could also possibly be used for hydrogen production,
oil and gas separation, and more.
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Disclaimer: I AM IN NO WAY ASSOCIATED with this company.......