{"id":37714,"date":"2026-05-27T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/?p=37714"},"modified":"2026-05-27T15:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T15:30:37","slug":"university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-breakthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-breakthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Rochester&#8217;s Zero-Waste Solar Desalination Breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-blockquote uagb-block-e7eb3fc3 uagb-blockquote__skin-border uagb-blockquote__stack-img-none\"><blockquote class=\"uagb-blockquote\"><div class=\"uagb-blockquote__content\">A University of Rochester research team has developed a solar-thermal desalination process that converts seawater to drinking water with zero brine waste \u2014 and can even recover lithium and other valuable minerals in the process.<\/div><footer><div class=\"uagb-blockquote__author-wrap uagb-blockquote__author-at-left\"><\/div><\/footer><\/blockquote><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-content-justification-space-between is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-b0ffac9c wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\"><div style=\"font-size:16px\" class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-post-author\"><div class=\"wp-block-post-author__content\"><p class=\"wp-block-post-author__name\">The University Network<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-social-share uagb-social-share__outer-wrap uagb-social-share__layout-horizontal uagb-block-ee584a31\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-social-share-child uagb-ss-repeater uagb-ss__wrapper uagb-block-ec619ce7\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__link\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"facebook\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__source-wrap\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__source-icon\"><svg xmlns=\"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 512 512\"><path d=\"M504 256C504 119 393 8 256 8S8 119 8 256c0 123.8 90.69 226.4 209.3 245V327.7h-63V256h63v-54.64c0-62.15 37-96.48 93.67-96.48 27.14 0 55.52 4.84 55.52 4.84v61h-31.28c-30.8 0-40.41 19.12-40.41 38.73V256h68.78l-11 71.69h-57.78V501C413.3 482.4 504 379.8 504 256z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-social-share-child uagb-ss-repeater uagb-ss__wrapper uagb-block-32d99934\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__link\" data-href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"twitter\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__source-wrap\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__source-icon\"><svg xmlns=\"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 512 512\"><path d=\"M389.2 48h70.6L305.6 224.2 487 464H345L233.7 318.6 106.5 464H35.8L200.7 275.5 26.8 48H172.4L272.9 180.9 389.2 48zM364.4 421.8h39.1L151.1 88h-42L364.4 421.8z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-social-share-child uagb-ss-repeater uagb-ss__wrapper uagb-block-1d136f14\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__link\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/shareArticle?url=\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"linkedin\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__source-wrap\"><span class=\"uagb-ss__source-icon\"><svg xmlns=\"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 448 512\"><path d=\"M416 32H31.9C14.3 32 0 46.5 0 64.3v383.4C0 465.5 14.3 480 31.9 480H416c17.6 0 32-14.5 32-32.3V64.3c0-17.8-14.4-32.3-32-32.3zM135.4 416H69V202.2h66.5V416zm-33.2-243c-21.3 0-38.5-17.3-38.5-38.5S80.9 96 102.2 96c21.2 0 38.5 17.3 38.5 38.5 0 21.3-17.2 38.5-38.5 38.5zm282.1 243h-66.4V312c0-24.8-.5-56.7-34.5-56.7-34.6 0-39.9 27-39.9 54.9V416h-66.4V202.2h63.7v29.2h.9c8.9-16.8 30.6-34.5 62.9-34.5 67.2 0 79.7 44.3 79.7 101.9V416z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than 2 billion people worldwide lack reliable access to safe drinking water, yet the leading methods for converting ocean water into something drinkable come with serious environmental costs. Now, a research team at the University of Rochester has developed a solar-powered desalination technique that eliminates brine waste entirely while also recovering valuable minerals \u2014 a potential breakthrough for both global water security and sustainable supply chains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The work, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41377-026-02315-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">published<\/a> in <em>Light: Science &amp; Applications<\/em>, was led by Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and physics and senior scientist at University of Rochester&#8217;s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. A <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.rsc.org\/en\/content\/articlelanding\/2026\/ta\/d5ta08968a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">companion study<\/a> in the <em>Journal of Materials Chemistry A<\/em> extends the approach to extract lithium directly from saltwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Conventional Desalination Falls Short<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reverse osmosis and thermal distillation \u2014 the two most widely used desalination technologies \u2014 are energy-hungry processes that require chemical pre-treatment of water and generate a byproduct called brine, a concentrated saltwater mixture that is typically pumped back into the ocean. That brine discharge raises local salinity levels, depletes oxygen, and disrupts marine ecosystems. Communities from California to the Middle East depend on these plants, yet the environmental trade-offs have long been a concern among water researchers and policymakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Laboratory-scale solar-thermal desalination methods have shown promise as a greener alternative, but they tend to break down when tested with actual ocean water. The reason comes down to chemistry: simulated seawater used in lab settings is typically just water and sodium chloride, which crystallizes in a grainy, porous way that can be rinsed off solar panels easily. Real seawater is far more complex. Magnesium- and calcium-based compounds crystallize in hard, non-porous crusts that clog panel surfaces over time \u2014 the same way mineral scale accumulates inside a kettle or a shower head, except seawater carries hundreds of times more dissolved salts than typical tap water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How the New Technology Works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Guo&#8217;s team addressed both the clogging problem and the brine problem by engineering black metal solar panels etched with femtosecond lasers. The laser treatment makes the metal surface super light-absorbing and superwicking \u2014 meaning it draws water toward itself with exceptional force. The panel is divided into two regions: an active zone that pulls a thin film of water across its surface, heats it with nearly all available solar radiation, and distills fresh water, and a passive outer zone where salts and minerals accumulate without interfering with the active desalination process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To keep the active surface from clogging, the team borrowed from an unlikely source of inspiration: the coffee ring effect, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has ever spilled a cup and watched the liquid dry into a dark ring at the edges. Guo explained the concept simply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;If you drop coffee on a surface, eventually the water evaporates and there&#8217;s a ring left at the outer edge that is the concentrated coffee particles,&#8221; Guo said in a news release.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His team engineered the panel&#8217;s grooves to exploit this same physics, directing dissolved salts outward toward the passive region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We use that same principle to advance the salts to the passive region,&#8221; Guo added.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The researchers validated their approach using real water samples collected from the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The panel surface remained self-cleaning throughout, continuously depositing salt crystals in the passive zone without any reduction in efficiency or need for chemical additives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Turning Waste Into Resources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps the most striking aspect of the new method is what happens to the salts left behind. Rather than generating liquid brine that must be discharged or processed, the system recovers close to 100% of dissolved solids in solid form \u2014 including table salt and, critically, lithium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lithium is a key ingredient in the rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles, laptops and smartphones, and demand for it is surging globally. Current mining operations are both energy-intensive and environmentally damaging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMining lithium from the earth has proven to be very taxing from an energy and environmental standpoint, so pulling lithium directly from saltwater could be a very important future route,\u201d added Guo.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The companion paper shows how embedding hydrogen titanate nanoparticles into the laser-etched grooves of the black metal surface selectively isolates lithium from the mixture of other salts. Using water samples from Utah&#8217;s Great Salt Lake, the team extracted roughly half the lithium present \u2014 a promising result for a first-generation system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why It Matters for Students and Young Professionals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Water scarcity is not a distant problem. Droughts, aquifer depletion and population growth are straining fresh water supplies in parts of the American Southwest, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and beyond. At the same time, the electric vehicle boom is driving fierce competition for lithium, with supply chain concerns affecting everything from battery costs to geopolitical tensions. A technology that simultaneously addresses fresh water access and critical mineral recovery \u2014 using only sunlight \u2014 touches nearly every major sustainability challenge facing the next generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Guo and his colleagues at University of Rochester&#8217;s Institute of Optics, including senior scientist Subash Singh, alumnus Ran Wei, and doctoral students Luheng Tang, Tainshu Xu and Mingjiang Ma, see the approach as inherently scalable. The current demonstrations are proof-of-concept devices, but the underlying physics do not impose fundamental size limits, suggesting larger installations could be feasible with further development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The research received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Worldwide Universities Network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:6px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/what-is-desalination-definition-ocean-water-704732\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">University of Rochester<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A University of Rochester research team has developed a solar-thermal desalination process that converts seawater to drinking water with zero brine waste \u2014 and can even recover lithium and other valuable minerals in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-no-separators","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1100,2418,2421,2420,944,2213,461,570,2419,2422],"class_list":["post-37714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability","tag-bill-melinda-gates-foundation","tag-desalination","tag-laboratory-for-laser-energetics","tag-lithium-recovery","tag-nsf","tag-solar-energy","tag-sustainability","tag-university-of-rochester","tag-water-scarcity","tag-worldwide-universities-network"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-break.png",1536,1024,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-break-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-break-300x200.png",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-break-768x512.png",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-break-1024x683.png",1024,683,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-break.png",1536,1024,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/university-of-rochesters-zero-waste-solar-desalination-break.png",1536,1024,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"The University Network","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/author\/funky_junkie\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"A University of Rochester research team has developed a solar-thermal desalination process that converts seawater to drinking water with zero brine waste \u2014 and can even recover lithium and other valuable minerals in the process.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37714"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37729,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37714\/revisions\/37729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}