Ashall, William (Aidan)2026-05-132026-05-132026-04-29APAhttps://hdl.handle.net/10222/86068Water scarcity is a problem that has long evaded sustainable solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the gendered burden of water collection falls disproportionately on women and children. Across 24 SSA countries, 13.54 million adult females and 3.36 million children spend over 30 minutes daily collecting water, resulting in physical injuries, psychological distress, spousal violence, and socioeconomic loss. Traditional reverse osmosis (RO) desalination technology requires high energy and centralized infrastructure impractical for SSA regions. However, the advent of portable renewable desalination technology attempts to address this challenge, offering a low infrastructure alternative for decentralized water access. This thesis conducts a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a 3kg plasmonic titanium carbide (TiC) floating solar still that uses upcycled waste tire rubber and passive interfacial solar evaporation to produce clean water. The LCA uses openLCA software and the Ecoinvent 3.12 database, influenced by ISO 14040 standards, to evaluate six ReCiPe 2016 impact categories. The results validate the Hotspot Shift Hypothesis (H2), as the environmental burden shifts from the operational phase to material synthesis and manufacturing. The device generates 20.88 kg CO2-eq per unit, with a carbon intensity of 9.30 g CO2-eq/L. This upfront carbon debt enables 640 days of near-zero operational emissions, producing over 2150 litres of potable water that meets World Health Organization (WHO) standards. The Levelized Cost of Water (LCOW) ranges from $0.005 to $0.0086 per litre. Critically, the device carries a net “water debt” of 2942.5 litres due to the cotton wicks that it uses to facilitate evaporation, though substituting other materials such as polyester would reduce this to just 149 litres. Thus, the TiC solar still offers a defensible intervention for water-scarce SSA communities, where its environmental trade-offs are outweighed by its social utility and economic accessibility.en