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Jul 3, 2013 / in Blog Articles

The common method of desalinating sea water is through Reverse Osmosis (RO) which relies on expensive and easily contaminated membranes which process consumes a lot of expensive energy. But now a team of researchers from the University of Marburg, Germany, and the  Universiy of Texas at Austin have developed a new water desalination process they say is among the cheapest and most energy-saving ever created.  The process, called electrochemically mediated seawater desalination, eliminates the need for membranes by separating salt from water at the microscale, the scientists claim. The technique has been described in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The desalination process is enabled by a small computer chip (picture above) which creates a series of channels split into two branches through which seawater would be run. Each of the two smaller channels would be connected to an electrode placed at the point where the channels branch out from one another. By applying a small amount of energy scientists are able to target electrodes, changing some of the chloride ions, which have negative charges, into neutral chlorine. According to Richard Crookes, leader of the research team “the membrane-free method we’ve developed still needs to be refined and scaled up, but if we succeed at that, then one day it might be possible tp provide fresh water on a massive scale using a simple, even portable, system.”Filcon Filters constantly monitors developments in filtration in order to remain at the cutting edge so to speak…and we’ll continue to keep you informed. Filcon is a leading South African liquid filtration company supply a wide range of filtration products such as filter housings, filter bags and cartridges etc…in addition we manufacture a range of centrifugal separators, automatic back flushing strainers, purge & Y strainers and in-line basket strainers. Filcon, providing clear solutions.