Changes in climate have considerable impact on many aspects of earth, including providing clean and safe drinking water to our home. Climate change is bound to leave us thirsty. With considerable threat to freshwater sources new and effective ways to produce drinking water is posing a challenge. Ocean is one of the biggest sources of drinking water, but salt content is on the higher side. Scientists have found out a way where salt from ocean water is removed and it becomes safe to drink. In fact, they are keen to open more avenues. Let us now explore some methods which they have adopted to purify water
Distillation
Distillation of water is a traditional method to remove salt from water. You need to evaporate water, and condensation into a liquid will take place. As water boils on to the air, salt will stay behind and in a separate container you can collect clean water.
A simplistic version of this procedure can be formulated in your own home by process of solar still. Over a bowl just stretches a sheet of plastic. The sun would make its way through the plastic sheet and make the water warm.
RV
Reverse osmosis is a popular method as advocated by aquafresh service centre. Pumps that are pressure driven through a specific membrane forces out the contaminated water. The bad water is filtered with clean water making its way through.
Of late research has been undertaken on a special type of membrane which would make water to be pushed easily. As compared to distillation this works out to be a low energy module and a cost-effective option. Though the management costs or annual operations could be a cause of concern, though cost would vary as per size of the plant.
Forward osmosis
Osmosis a natural process is a centre of focus in this method. The trend is of water to flow from regions of water from high concentration to areas of low concentration. Consider a situation where you have a couple of membranes which makes flowing of water easy. It would keep a control over salt content.
Fill one of the sides with salt water and the other with pure water. The flow of pure water would take place from the membrane to the regions of salt water so as to maintain a balance.
This system models itself on this concept and would not need high pressure pumps like a RV module. A membrane separates both containers, one side has contaminated water and on the other side usually salt is kept which has superior levels of solute salt. Water would start to flow and, in the process, diluting salt water.
But this method does have its own pitfalls. Even though pure water flows but it does not eradicate the salt content present in water. With this method you can get rid of a wide range of contaminants that are present in water, but still on one of the sides you might have salt water.
