Researchers develop a desalination device to extract fresh water from sea water

Water, the most vital necessity for survival of all living beings is widely used for different purposes by humans. Only 2.5% of water on earth is considered for drinking while the rest is salty. But now as the pollution around has increased the water available for human consumption has decreased resulting in scarcity of water in many places. This along with contamination has started affecting lives of various creatures leading to loss of lives. Water.org says that nearly 3.4 million people die every year just because of water problems. 



To avoid this scarcity various measures are being taken to save water like use of dams, filtering techniques involving chemical treatments to make water reusable. But
worldwide the shortage of fresh water is still a issue.

Researchers are said to have come up with technique called electrochemically mediated seawater desalination which can work even with a normal AA battery. The device designed to work on this technique contains a plastic chip filled with the sea water in junction with the so called as a micro-channel having two branches. However Kyle Knust, a graduate student in Crook's lab says that the main function lies at the junction which uses an embedded electrode.

When the voltage is applied to this device, the embedded electrode at the junction increases the electric field by neutralizing the chlorine ions present in sea water. Thus the increase in the electric field occurs only at the junction and nowhere else in the channel. This increase in field helps in directing the salts to one branch and the desalinated water to other. Junction is hence referred to as an ion depletion region.  

But this method is able to only reduce the salts present by just 25 percent. Therefore further work on it has to be done to achieve 99 percent of desalination to make it fit for drinking. This being just the principle to be used, improvements in the ion depletion zone will get their goal achieved leading to solve the worldwide problem of fresh water shortage. So lets pray for its success.