A new solar desalination system takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight. The system flushes out accumulated salt, so replacement parts aren’t needed often, meaning the system could potentially produce drinking water that is cheaper than tap water.
It would be interesting to see what adding in some small external heat sources to augment the evaporation and allow it to run 24/7 would do to the cost/production values.
I never took fluid dynamics but would this disrupt the small eddies forming in this device? It sounded like the small/gentler eddies are the primary reason the salt is able to move and exit in a way that won’t clog the machine.
Possibly, but my take was that the solar heating is at the top of the device where the water/air comes into contact with the box walls. It sounded like they either use natural thermal convection or small devices to generate those currents. So the additional heat could make it run faster, or just trash the flows entirely.
But at the same tack, if you know how much heat is being added to the system by the sun, you could set your resistive heaters to only add that much and decouple it from needing solar to work (allowing production during night/inclement weather situations, or the ability to run inside in colder climates).