While out digging around on the internet I ran across this article.

If you’ve ever been to an island, water is probably one of the biggest problems they can have… Especially Clean Water. It’s a problem in the states as well. Many times in the Caribbean it comes down to two ideas for water – desalinization or cisterns. Desalinization isn’t cheap – and it can be a slow process – that’s what makes this article noteworthy.

Not to re-explain the entire article, scientists have been looking at electodialysis for desalinization. except that doesn’t clean all the bad parts out.

“Now Deng and co say they have found a way to produce clean drinking water in a single step using electrodialysis. The key is to place a layer of porous material close to the cathode which then acts as a filter and removes anything that cannot pass through the micropores.

The porous material in question is fitted glass, which is made by sintering together glass particles to form a porous solid. The pore size is around 0.5 micrometres so anything larger than that, such as dirt particles, cannot pass.”

Here’s hoping they get it down in cost and size. It does require electricity – so maybe there can be a whole solar component to this.