Inventions, innovations, and new technologies: Solar Desalination

Solar Power Technologies for Desalination

Throughout the world, there are regions of vast extent that have many favorable features, but whose development is principally limited by the lack of fresh water. In arid areas where large-scale development has already occurred, e.g. parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the extraction of fresh water via desalination plants requires very large energy consumption. This motivates the develop...

Solar thermal powered desalination: membrane versus distillation technologies

Multiple Effect Distillation (MED) is generally considered to be the desalination technology most suited to integration with concentrating solar thermal collectors on a medium to large scale. However the cost and energy requirement of Reverse Osmosis (RO) have fallen significantly in recent years, so that solar thermal powered RO deserves consideration. We compare commercial desalination proces...

New technologies and innovations in hysteroscopy.

Ambulatory services, with the performance of diagnostic and operative hysteroscopy as an outpatient or office procedure, are providing much of the stimulus for the development of devices that will offer women a better hysteroscopy experience. For the many women who are readily able to tolerate outpatient hysteroscopy, it offers significant advantages, as they can receive safe, efficient and eff...

Passive Vacuum Solar Flash Desalination

Innovations, improvements, and the optimal adoption of new technologies

This paper extends the literature on technology adoption by introducing a distinction between technological breakthroughs (‘innovations’) and the engineering re/nements (‘improvements’) that follow such a breakthrough. Firms do not necessarily wait for a future technological breakthrough, but instead have an incentive to delay the adoption of a new technology until it is su2ciently advanced. We...