Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Seeking Water from the Sun
Most of us take plentiful access to drinking water for granted, and don't think twice about how much we waste when we install inefficient plumbing fixtures, leave the water running when we don't need to, and plant lawns, flowers and ornamental shrubs that require frequent irrigation.
Okay, I'm cheating here --- there was never much rainfall in the land occupied in the Navajo Nation, and brackish water is not a new problem in this area. But potable water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, even in the U.S. And there's increasing pressure to allow hydro-fracking, even where it could affect all of our drinking water.
40 percent of the population on some parts of the Navajo Nation does not have access to potable water. That doesn’t just mean drinking water. The water is not even good enough to bathe in, wash dishes, irrigate a vegetable garden or quench the thirst of livestock. Many Navajos have to make long trips every few days to haul water from communal wells. A large part of the problem is that most of the groundwater of the Navajo Nation is salty, brackish and impossible to drink because it comes through a salt cavern.
Scientists from the University of Arizona and the Bureau of Reclamation took on a project to design and build an off-the-grid prototype solar solution that would purify existing undrinkable water. The system co-generation solar system will produce heat and electricity to run the entire desalination system without being tied to the grid.