Name: 世界的な水危機への取り組み (Tackling the global water crisis)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:21:59.000Z
Duration: 3 min 8 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

taken from rivers, lakes, and reservoirs in the

基礎受動態

United States is earmarked for the cooling needs

A large portion of that water ends up floating away

In other words, hundreds of billions of gallons

of clean, otherwise usable water are lost each year.

But now, a new system devised by a team of MIT engineers

to capture a substantial amount of that lost water,

ultimately making power plants less wasteful

And the water collected could become a source

of potable water for parched cities around the world.

The motivation to develop this new system

of current natural fog harvesting systems.

Existing systems, which generally consist of

a plastic or wire mesh hung vertically in the path

of fog banks, only capture about one to three percent

of the water droplets that pass through them.

The reason for such a tiny percentage is the result

such as the wires in these mesh fog catching screens,

the air flow naturally deviates around the obstacle.

Thus, carrying droplets that were heading toward the wire

The researchers found once they zap the fog

with a beam of electrically charged particles

known as ions, the opposite effect happens.

Not only do all the droplets that are in the path

of the wires land on them, but even droplets

that were aiming for the holes in the mesh

get pulled toward the wires due to the charge.

The team is currently building a full-scale

to be placed on the cooling tower of MIT's

that provides most of the campus's electricity,

In a series of experiments, the researchers demonstrated

the concept by building a small lab version

of a stack emitting a plume of water droplets.

They then placed their ion beam and mesh screen on it.

When the condenser is off, a thick plume of fog droplets

Once the condenser is turned on, the plume

almost instantly disappears and liquid can be seen

The equipment is simple, and the amount of power

The researchers say this could be a great solution

by offsetting the need for about 70% of new

desalination plant installations in the next decade.

For example, a typical 600 megawatt power plant

could capture 150 million gallons of water a year,

representing a value of millions of dollars.

at MIT's central utility plant in the fall.

The campus's power plant tests will not only

de-risk the technology, but will also help

the MIT campus improve its water footprint.