Gemstone Team NOSALTOur research project has addressed the global need for greater accessibility to
potable drinking water, specifically within the regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Initially,
we planned to design a unique desalination system that was composed of a pre-filtration
unit, a microbial desalination cell (MDC) and a post-desalination treatment unit. When
in-person lab work was no longer feasible due to COVID-19 guidelines, we refocused our
project to review the construction, efficiency, and cost effectiveness of the different
designs of potential prefiltration units and MDC configurations. Our review of potential
prefiltration systems included both chemical and physical separation methods, and the
review of the MDC included the air cathode, biocathode and stacked configurations.
While researching the technical details of the prefiltration and MDC systems, we also
considered the cultural and societal impacts of introducing a technology such as the MDC
into our project region. Our project started as an analysis of an emerging technology, but
as the team has grown, the project has transformed into a comprehensive review of the
emerging microbial desalination technology and the societal impacts of implementing it
into some of the water scarce regions of coastal sub-Saharan Africa
