27 July 2026
Roberto Raffaele Meo, PhD researcher at Politecnico di Torino and member of the MEloDIZER consortium, has received the Best Presentation Award at the 2026 joint ICGET/ICWPT conference (11th International Conference on Green Energy Technologies and 11th International Conference on Water Pollution and Treatment), held in Tokyo, Japan, from 25 to 27 July 2026.
The award was given in the session “Water Treatment Technology Innovation and Water-Energy Nexus Systems,” where Meo presented research carried out within MEloDIZER on the use of direct solar heating to enhance the performance of membrane distillation.
The presentation was based on the paper “Systematic exploration of direct solar absorption potential to enhance direct contact membrane distillation,” co-authored by Meo together with Lorenzo Craveri, Erica Bertozzi, Marco Malaguti, Alberto Tiraferri, Matteo Morciano and Matteo Fasano, and published open access in Desalination (Volume 606, 2025, article 118740, DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2025.118740). The study analysed over 1,000 simulation cases to assess how distributed solar heat can boost water flux in direct contact membrane distillation, reporting productivity gains exceeding 200% under optimised conditions, a finding directly relevant to MEloDIZER’s work on coupling membrane distillation systems with renewable energy sources.
The recognition highlights the strength of the research being carried out within the project’s academic partners and reinforces MEloDIZER’s presence in the international scientific community working on sustainable water treatment.
