Membraneless (is that a word?) water desalination system simplifies process of creating drinkable water from salt water.

This is pretty awesome--I get excited any time I hear/read about new breakthroughs in drinkable-water-making technology.

 Link to this post:
 http://www.google.com/buzz/107650271986223730197/fD5SqzBLgt6/Membraneless-Water-Desalination-System-MIT-News

1:28 pm Kurt Starnes: Membraneless Water Desalination System [MIT News]

According to the article, this method also removes many contaminants, viruses and bacteria at the same time.

One of the leading desalination methods, called reverse osmosis, uses membranes that filter out the salt, but these require strong pumps to maintain the high pressure needed to push the water through the membrane, and are subject to fouling and blockage of the pores in the membrane by salt and contaminants. The new system separates salts and microbes from the water by electrostatically repelling them away from the ion-selective membrane in the system — so the flowing water never needs to pass through a membrane. That should eliminate the need for high pressure and the problems of fouling, the researchers say.

 See, the world is running out of big supplies of drinkable water.  There's plenty of water around, we're just polluting it or using it up as drinking water or for other things like farming or manufacturing.  So, the idea of turning the oceans into giant reservoirs of drinkable water is a good one, but taking the salt out of salt water is an expensive process.  Simplifying it is a linch pin that will allow desalination to become economically viable.

Don't forget, if we can't afford it, we can't do it.  Well, unless it's war and stuff. ;P

PS on a total sidenote, this is a test post sent using Google Buzz's "email" feature. I'm sending it through my Posterous blog (like I do with almost all of my posts) which will cross post to Tumblr and then end up everywhere else I like it to be (I hope).

Posted via email from thepete's posterous