This is amazing.... Now, a windmill that can produce freshwater from seawater...

India
March 4, 2008 8:01am CST
Dutch researchers at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) have developed a windmill that would be able to produce fresh water from seawater directly. The windmill is suited for use by, for instance, small villages in isolated, dry coastal areas. The mechanism uses reverse osmosis – a separation process that uses pressure to force a solvent through a membrane that retains the solute on one side and allows the pure solvent to pass to the other side. Using extreme pressure, the windmill works with the help of a high-pressure pump that pushes water through a membrane. The combination of windmills and desalination installations is already commercially available. These windmills produce electricity from wind power. The electricity is stored and used to drive the high-pressure pump for the reverse osmosis installation. But this storage of electricity is very expensive and energy is also lost during conversion. In the TU Delft installation, the high-pressure pump is driven directly by wind power. Also, water storage will be used to overcome calm periods, as it is cheaper to store water than electricity. On the basis of the windmill’s capacity at varying wind speeds, it is estimated that it will produce 5 to 10 cubic metres of fresh water per day: enough drinking water for a small village of 500 inhabitants. The first prototype has been built and is already working at a location near the A13 motorway near Delft. Tests on seawater are to be conducted shortly. Now what is to be looked into is the cost. I wish Indian government read this and adopt it as soon as it is available. This would prove to be the most important for our sub-continent, surrounded by water.....
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