DailyDirt: Separating Salt From Seawater...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's plenty of water on our planet, but unfortunately for us, not all of that water is drinkable or easily obtained. A whole ocean of water is even locked away underground trapped in minerals that we hopefully won't need to tap into for fresh water. However, drought conditions could get worse, so we might have to explore more exotic ways of getting potable water. Here are just a few desalination technologies that might become useful soon.

• A technique using "shock electrodialysis" could desalinate water and also eliminate particulates and bacteria from seawater. It's not certain if this method could be made economical, though, and it's a long way off from being scaled up. [url]
• Engineers at Lockheed Martin have found yet another use for graphene -- as a filter for separating dissolved salts in water. It's tricky to produce large quantities of graphene sheets with nanometer-sized holes, but look out for Perforene -- it could revolutionize desalination. [url]
• Another desalination technique using microfluidic channels and an electrochemical process could turn seawater into drinking water. This process doesn't use a lot of energy, but creating a vast number of microfluidic channels in parallel could be a bit of a challenge. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: desalination, drinking, drought, graphene, microfluidic channels, perforene, potable, salt, seawater, shock electrodialysis, water
Companies: lockheed martin