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Ions trick to desalinate water
Published: 17 December, 2009, 16:13
Edited: 21 January, 2010, 17:57
A startup company is experimenting with technology, which manipulates the ions in seawater to produce drinking water with little energy consumption.
Currently there are two major methods for seawater desalination, both of them requiring a lot of energy. One uses the evaporation and condensation cycle, the other one is based on reverse osmosis filtering.
Canadian company Saltworks Technologies says its technology will consume four times less energy per liter of fresh water produced, reports Technology Review. Their approach is based on manipulating the salt ions in water to trick them out of the stream.
The most energy-consuming part is the preparation of water with increased salinity. From the normal 3.5% of the sea water, it is boosted to at least 18% by evaporation. The prototype plant company operates by using sprayers and sunlight, but an industrial-scale version is expected to utilize waste heat from some facility.
Then the concentrated solution is fed into a processing unit, where ordinary seawater circulates through polystyrene tubes. The plastic is chemically treated to let either positive sodium or negative chloride ions to pass. The lower salinity of water in the tubes draws in corresponding ions.
Then the two enriched streams are connected to the third and final one, and draw salt ions out of it. The result is desalinated water, which can be treated with UF for disinfection and delivered to consumers.
The solution is basically an inventive integration of existing reliable technology, which gives the company high hopes for market success.
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There are many technologies available which do not require "pyrotechnic" means to achieve work, which makes me wonder why the world cries about "global warming" when we fail to make alternatives available.