Chemists Work to Desalt the Ocean for Drinking Water, One Nanoliter at a Time
By creating a small electrical field that removes salts from seawater, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Marburg in Germany have introduced a new method for the desalination of seawater that consumes less energy and is dramatically simpler than conventional techniques. The new method requires so little energy that it can run on a store-bought battery.
The process evades the problems confronting current desalination methods by eliminating the need for a membrane and by separating salt from water at a microscale. (more…)