Desalination is a critical tool for addressing water scarcity, yet conventional renewable-powered desalination systems rely heavily on energy storage, increasing cost and complexity. In this talk, our speakers will present a novel control strategy—flow-commanded current control—for enabling direct-drive photovoltaic electrodialysis (PV-ED) with little to no energy storage. Their approach maximizes real-time energy utilization, achieving high water production efficiency while reducing and eliminating the need for energy storage.
Findings from a six-month field deployment of a fully autonomous, community-scale PV-ED system in New Mexico demonstrated 94% energy utilization while reducing energy storage requirements by over 99% compared to typical PV desalination systems. These results highlight the potential of PV-ED to provide cost-effective, decentralized water treatment for resource-constrained communities and its broader implications for sustainable desalination at scale.
Jon Bessette is a PhD candidate within the K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Center at MIT. His research is focused on the development of desalination and water treatment systems for resource-constrained environments: from off-grid communities in India to agriculture in the Middle East. Bessette earned a BS from the SUNY University at Buffalo (2020) in mechanical engineering with a minor in studio art, and an MS (2022) from MIT in mechanical engineering. Bessette is a former Fulbright scholar (2017), Critical Language Scholar (2019), Marshall Scholar finalist (2020), and NSF GRFP recipient (2020). He received the International Desalination Association Innovation Award (2023) for his work in batteryless photovoltaic desalination, is a part of the inaugural Morningside Academy for Design at MIT (2022), and is a J-WAFS Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellow for Water Solutions (2024).
To learn more:
Organizations
https://gear.mit.edu - The Global Engineering & Research Center
https://kira.eco - A company spinout commercializing this work
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-024-00314-6 - The associated journal article
Press
People
https://meche.mit.edu/people/faculty/awinter@mit.edu - Amos Winter faculty profile
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanbessette/ - connect with Jon here!
https://jwafs.mit.edu/people/jonathan-bessette - J-WAFS profile for Jon