Water and Power

While chatting wtih my older brother yesterday I was given the challenge of inventing something that would win me a Nobel prize (I'm not sure how much sarcasm was involved as g-chat doesn't really communicate tone that well)  While I was pointing out that it is unlikely that any engineering achievement would warrant any of the 6 prizes , and explaining that the only way I might win such an honor would be if I developed a technology that successfully produced both electricity and water cleanly and efficiently.  Remembering my experiences at the NorthEast Cleantech Open one water producing technology stood out in my mind.  A company called NBD Nano has been developing a technology based on the properties of the Namib Desert Beetle, whose unique evolutionary adaptations allow it to produce water drinking water in one of the driest places on Earth.  Their coating technology is both a hydrophobic and hydrophilic causing water to collect into droplets along the surface of a product.  The additional application that sprang to mind from my conversation and general idea of NBD's technology would be to apply this kind of surface treatment to solar panels.  Allowing the consumer to produce clean electricity and drinking water from a single device.  Depending on  the technical specifications of NBD's coating technology different design solutions would make more sense than others.  Ideally if the material coating is roughly the same transparency as that of normal glass the coating could be applied to the panel in addition to the glass layer, while there would be some loss in generating efficiency users would benefit from a system that should be relatively easy to maintain.

If the surface coating turns out to be too opaque for the solar panel to operate efficiently the coating could be applied to the underside of the panel (as shown below).  By placing the water collecting surface on the back side of the solar panels additional design requirements would need to be considered, first and foremost being that of air flow, without a constant supply of new air there would be no way to continue to produce any quantity of water.  Accommodating access for cleaning might also need to be considered (as I don't know if the technology qualifies as self cleaning).  Whether or not the design could be made to promote passive flow with out over complicating the installation process for users in extremely remote locations would also need to be considered.  (I consider active air flow much easier to implement as it just requires that the offset design have fans at one end or another, but more likely to have a mechanical break causing problems and reduced net electrical output from the panels (ok that might not be the case as the more active cooling could increase the solar panel's overall efficiency in hot climates, I really don't know, something like that needs lab testing))

 Personally I'm very curious if something like this A) was efficient enough to be used by anyone at all B) easy enough to use in the water stressed regions of the planet C) cost effective/environmentally friendly enough to actually improve sustainability.  Hopefully an approach like this, or realistically something way more elegant and effective will happen sooner than later.