Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Purification of Water

Name: Loey Waterman
Date: January 14, 2016

Water: Getting The Salt Out
Author of article: SID PERKINS
Date article written: DECEMBER 8, 2015

Source: "Water: Getting the Salt out." Student Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2016.

One of the biggest problems we as humans face is how we are going to overcome our growing population, and the inevitable fact that at some point fresh water will run out, and we need an alternative. Over October and November of 2015, Martin Bazant and his team all from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, came up with a new method that, “zaps” as they say,  salt water, and makes drinking water. As you might think, Bazant and his team were not the first people to have an idea on how to try solve this problem, although, unlike other ideas, this one makes the water safe to drink, and tasty. As well as this, the new method is cost efficient, and overall very practical. In an interview I found in an article called “Water: Getting The Salt Out,” Bazant states: “The new system can work nonstop. And, it’s materials are cheap, so making larger versions should be easy and quite affordable. That makes the system practical.” As well as why this breakthrough is so important, is the question of how it works. Most people think that it is some genius, complex idea that is incomprehensible. Although it is genius, it isn’t really that complex at all. How it works, is the system takes advantage of the fact that sodium and chlorine particles have an electrical charge. These “charged particles” are called ions. This new system uses electricity to move, and steer if you will, the ions in the water in a certain direction. This separates them from a stream of fresh (unsalted) water, therefore having an ending product of fresh, tasty water. Although this does seem great, there is a con in this system, and that it that the system only steers charged particles, so it will not be able to remove pollutants that have no electric charge. Although this is disappointing, this is a great discovery, and it will greatly help our world.
When I was little, my parents would try to expose me to some problems of the world like this, so ever since then I have been very interested with how to research and solve these certain problems, including this one. This definitely influenced my choice on this topic, and why it is important to me. As well as this, every person in our society and world benefits from this, and even generations to come benefit from this because simply everyone needs fresh water to drink, and Martin Bazant solved a vast majority of how to get more. As a last note, I think I want to add that my first reaction to this article was relief. I know that this solution to the problem is not perfect, seeing that it cannot get every bad bacteria or pollution out, and over time we will have to find improvements, but over all, I believe that this is truly one of the greatest breakthroughs when it comes to science.

2 comments:

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  2. Wow! That is amazing that in a few year our drinking water might be from the ocean. I wonder if that they can change the salt water in fresh water if that could help the drought in California?
    Well Done - Colin :)

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