The grand prize winner at this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition was an MIT spinout that’s developing a system that captures and recycles vaporized water from thermoelectric power plants. The recycled water can be constantly reused in the plant’s cooling system, saving millions of gallons and dollars annually, or be shipped as potable water to water-scarce areas.

“Four thousand children die every day because they don’t have access to clean water, and the water crisis is only getting worse,” Maher Damak, Ph.D., a mechanical engineering graduate and co-founder of Infinite Cooling,  said in the startup’s winning pitch. “... Our mission is to help solve the water crisis and save power plants $10 billion a year.” The technology was based, in part, on Damak’s graduate thesis.

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