So in ideal conditions one could expect to provide about 12 to 15 people with drinking water per square meter. For me this is an impressive number.

If I calculate one unit with 300 dollars this would mean 5.5 cents per person per day for one year for fresh drinking water. And after that only a little bit for maintenance probably.

Hmmm, yes it is. It's nearly too impressive!

From the article "The team estimates that a system with a roughly 1-square-meter solar collecting area could meet the daily drinking water needs of one person.", which sounds very different.

On this Q&A page [1] Zhang is quoted "Our current strategy, for example, is to use an assembly of 100 of these devices to achieve an area of 1 m2, which will increase the total production by 100 times to create 10-20 liters of clean water per day."

I don't want to sound too negative, but something doesn't add up here. Still, enough water for one person per square meter of desalination plant is an impressive result I think. The oceans are big.

[1] https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/feat...

96.3 um/s! That's enough to drain a 6 foot deep swimming pool in 5.27 hours.