Scientists have developed a solar-powered desalination system that turns seawater into fresh water while removing nearly all of the leftover salt as a solid instead of producing harmful brine. The self-cleaning technology could also recover valuable minerals such as lithium, potentially turning desalination waste into a useful resource.
At the heart of the technology are solar panels made from black metal that has been treated with femtosecond lasers. A femtosecond is an extraordinarily short unit of time, equal to one quadrillionth of a second. Pulses from these ultrafast lasers can precisely alter a material’s surface, creating microscopic structures that dramatically change how it interacts with light and water.
Neat
And it’s very easy to make, you just need to ask Finland to get black metal
Yeah, but the environmental cost of the corpse paint hasn’t been well studied