How can freshwater be made from ocean water

Additionally, you will want to leave a decent space between the top of your cup and the water level in the pan. Watch the water as it begins to boil and condenses. The condensed water droplets that collect on the lid and drip into your cup will have left behind all the dissolved salt. This process may take up to 30 minutes.

Once the water in your cup has reached a desirable level then turn the stove off so it may cool. You may want to carefully remove the cup from the pot so that it can cool faster. This next innovative way to distill water is called solar desalination. First, collect salt or seawater in the large bowl or container. Then place an empty smaller bowl or container in the center of the larger one. Next, you will take a sheet of plastic wrap and cover the larger bowl with it.

Lastly, place a small rock or pebble in the middle of your plastic wrap directly over your empty smaller cup or bowl. Make sure that you have placed your set up in direct sunlight so that the solar desalination process can take effect without hindrance.

The sun will help the water evaporate and the plastic wrap will catch the condensation which will run down the plastic to the rock weighted spot where it will drip into the freshwater cup. After only a few hours… the length of time it takes is the downside… it will give you fresh water to drink!

It is important to note that direct sunlight is important for this process to work well just like when using a bowl inside a smaller bowl method mentioned above in the 2 method. The exciting thing about this solar desalination process is that it only requires one water collection container, plastic sheet or something similar, and rocks. Super easy and simple! The downside, like all the other methods, is that it takes several hours so be patient. The positives of this Aquamate blowup water purification kit are that it comes in a small, easy to carry, inflatable kit and the what I like most about it is that it does not require any power or electricity.

In nature, this basic process is responsible for the water hydrologic cycle. The sun supplies energy that causes water to evaporate from surface sources such as lakes, oceans, and streams. The water vapor eventually comes in contact with cooler air, where it re-condenses to form dew or rain.

This process can be imitated artificially and more rapidly than in nature, using alternative sources of heating and cooling.

Remember looking at the picture at the top of this page of a floating solar still? The same process that drives that device can also be applied if you find yourself in the desert in need of a drink of water. The low-tech approach to accomplish this is to construct a "solar still" which uses heat from the sun to run a distillation process to cause dew to form on something like plastic sheeting.

The diagram to the right illustrates this. Using seawater or plant material in the body of the distiller creates humid air, which, because of the enclosure created by the plastic sheet, is warmed by the sun. The humid air condenses water droplets on the underside of the plastic sheet, and because of surface tension , the water drops stick to the sheet and move downward into a trough, from which it can be consumed.

Water is everywhere, which is fortunate for all of humanity, as water is essential for life. Even though water is not always available in the needed quantity and quality for all people everywhere, people have learned to get and use water for all of their water needs, from drinking, cleaning, irrigating crops, producing electricity, and for just having fun. Surface tension in water might be good at performing tricks, such as being able to float a paper clip on its surface, but surface tension performs many more duties that are vitally important to the environment and people.

Find out all about surface tension and water here. Do you wear contact lenses? If so, you most likely use a saline water solution to clean them. But what else do we use saline water for and do we really use that much? Read on to learn all about the use of saline water. In your everyday life you are not involved much with saline water. You are concerned with freshwater to serve your life's every need.

But, most of Earth's water, and almost all of the water that people can access, is saline, or salty water. This paper uses chemical and physical data from a large U. Geological Surveygroundwater dataset with wells in the U.

The leading process for desalination in terms of installed capacity and yearly growth is reverse osmosis RO Fritzmann and others, The RO membrane processes use semipermeable membranes and applied pressure on the membrane feed side to preferentially induce water permeation through the membrane while rejecting salts. Reverse osmosis plant membrane systems.

These countries make up the one percent of the world currently relying on desalination to meet water needs. But the UN predicts that by 14 percent of the world will rely on desalination to meet water needs. Desalination is the process of purifying saline water into a potable fresh water.

Basically—turning ocean water into drinkable fresh water. Sounds pretty cool! There are several ways to remove salt from water. Reverse osmosis and distillation are the most common ways to desalinate water. Reverse osmosis water treatment pushes water through small filters leaving salt behind. Distillation on a large scale involves boiling water and collecting water vapor during the process. Both require a lot of energy, infrastructure and are costly.

Image: Flickr: ro plant. The energy requirements are so high that the cost for a lot of countries is too much. There are environmental concerns too. InEight is a construction project management software developer, helping contractors, InEight is a construction project management software developer, helping contractors, owners, and engineers to overcome their biggest project challenges.

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