Dubai has it, Sydney has it and San Diego is getting it soon. What do these three very diverse cities in very different parts of the world have in common?

A severe difficulty of freshwater supply while being right there next to billions of liters of ocean water.

Desalination is the magic word that is making life a lot easier for these cities and the Desolenator is the product that makes it household friendly, with the opportunity to help millions of people around the world to their daily need of drinkable water.

The middle east has been on the forefront of desalination technology for a while now. In desert countries, the need for fresh water is extremely high and the much needed energy, quite cheap. Israel is about to open its 5th plant soon, bringing the quota to 80% while Dubai has a staggering 98% of its population supplied by desalination plants. Taking seawater and turning it into drinkable H20 has been possible for a long time—there are actually about 300 desalination plants in the US, but it has never been cheap or easy.

Additionally, solar power has been on the rise for decades now and it comes at no surprise that another industry is making good use of it. WaterFX is one company to do so. A single WaterFX module can produce up to 65.000 gallons of drinking water per day with a footprint of only 160 x 40 feet and use almost any kind of water as source.

While many world cities have the means to achieve large scale projects based on priority, water shortage is just as big of an issue in numerable other places that are far from having infrastructure support such as those seen in larger and more developed cities. Cities in India and Africa alone have time and time again ran into problems with water distribution and quality. But as everything gets smaller these days, William Janssen is right now on a journey to make household sized desalination a reality.

Taking a common solar panel as base, Janssen created his first prototype right in his living room before turning it into a patent and a real business venture.
Once his proof of concept was created, he started to develop the later models right in one of the places that needs it most – India.

So how does a product that could bring water independence to a billion people work ? :

Desolenator’s solar panel directly converts sunlight into electric energy, and has an incredibly high output due to additional insulation – a solar panel in Dubai during the summer, for instance, can get hot enough to fry an egg on it. Therefore to maximize heat, the top of the Desolenator panel is fitted with double glazing and insulated with foam. Input water then flows over a solar collector so that it reaches boiling temperature, and the water vapor that’s produced as a result is captured and fed back into the solar collector as condensed, distilled water.

In their current ongoing Indiegogo campaign William Janssen, CEO, Founder and Inventor of the Desolenator is asking the community for the financial help needed to take the latest prototype into a small production and to start testing it in a fishing village in India, as well as shipping the first ones to the backers around the globe. It is going strong but check it out for yourself and maybe help to get it into the hands of people who really need it.