Most of the planet is covered by water and unfortunately for humans most of that water has too much salt (NaCl) in it for humans to consume safely. About ⅓ of the population lives near salt water that is undrinkable. The problem is how to turn that saltwater into drinkable desalinated water for consumption, livestock or agricultural use. In addition to doing that is doing it in an energy efficient way so that even those with limited access to electricity or those impoverished can have access to this technology. There are billions of people around the globe who would benefit from a low power, low effort, reusable water desalination device.
Our team is focused on the issue of water desalination. We are taking salinated water, then performing electrodialysis in order to convert it to clean drinking water. For electrodialysis, we will use ion-exchange membranes, which the water will pass through in order to isolate its sodium and chloride atoms. The final desalination device will then be tested for use in series and parallel in order to test for increases in efficiencies. A successful desalination chamber should be able to efficiently and reliably desalinate brackish water, for our purposes, we test using water with the level of salinity of the ocean, 3.5%.