A Cambridge, Massachusetts-based desalination start up has closed on a $10 million round of funding to develop its proprietary technology to produce clean, potable water from salt water using one tenth the amount of energy used in traditional desalination plants.

As we reported last month, Yale researchers Rob McGinnis and Dr. Menachem Elimelech have developed a proprietary desalination system called Engineered Osmosis that they say could produce clean drinking water from seawater or other wastewater at half the current cost. Now that their new company— Oasys Water—has secured Series A funding, it can proceed with the development of its potentially revolutionary commercial desalination platform.

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Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan believes that giant solar power stations along the Mediterranean coast of northern Africa and the Middle East could power up to one-sixth of Europe’s electricity. What’s more, the Prince says the stations could function as desalinization plants to provide Africa and the Middle East with fresh water.

Prince Talal calls his plan “Desertec” and has pitched it to the European Parliament and it has the support of many engineers and politicians in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In the Prince’s view, countries with so much desert should work with the more energy-intensive nations to build a mutually beneficial solar power scheme.

Europe’s initial investment would be about 10 billion dollars for more than 100 generators, fitted with thousands of huge mirrors. Those mirrors would use a technology called “concentrating solar power,” or CSP. A CSP station has several hundred banks of giant mirrors that can be controlled to focus the sunrays on a central metal pillar filled with water. The water then starts to heat up and ends up vaporizing into a superhot steam which drives turbines and makes electricity.

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