THE WATER FILTER PROJECT
If 2% of the earth’s water is fresh and we’re running out of that fresh water, the obvious answer is to find a way to turn the 98% of water that is salty into fresh. If removing the salt is all that is necessary, then experimentation for filtering is an obvious answer. So despite the fact that this has probably been done several times over, I’m going to do just that and filter my experimental fresh water with known means. If anything, understanding the process will only leave room for the me or other who are doing the same to suggest better ways to make the process either more cost-effective or incapable of consuming other needed resources. The definite result is that this project will demonstrate the importance of educating the new generation to think this way.
The goal here is to advance upon a simple grade-school science project in order to make is not only easier, but to provide larger scale ideas. The idea is just trapping boiling water, therefore I’m going to use a simple device like a tea pot to aim the evaporating water that allows the trapped condensing water to flow down into a glass that does not also sit in the boiling water. I fear the glass might break, or I might only have plastic.
After the experiment this is the verdict: this process is very inefficient. For the 2 cups of water I poured into the pan around the bowl, I only received about a spoonful of fresh water. I can imagine that if this process were imagined in upscaled proportions that it would cost far too much to execute this process soon. It may even cost too much to experiment with. The concensus is that we may need to cut costs elsewhere to make it happen. How else will we maintain fresh water?
1 comment:
Hehe. That's my hand in the picture. In any case, Laura is spot on in pointing out the inefficiencies of boiling water as a way to desalt it. It shows the importance of either a completely sealed collection system (which is hard for the layman to accomplish) or for alternative methods such as reverse osmosis or electrodialysis for greater retaining of water. Solar stills seem to work better as well, perhaps due to the fact that the high temperature of boiling evaporates water too fast or too fully, not even giving it the right temperature range to settle back down into water again.
It would also be interesting to try freezing, but that solution would obviously only work naturally here and in other cold climates, and only for the winter season, which shows its inconsistency as a water source.
All in all, it doesn't bode well for simple methods of getting fresh water.
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