Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com where smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, how do they desalinate water to make it drinkable? Saltwater from the ocean is undrinkable, and the same holds true for brackish water. Of the water on Earth has salt in it, and more than half of the fresh water is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. So people who need fresh water often look out at the ocean and wonder if there's an easy way to remove the salt.
There are three common ways to do it. First, it's possible to separate salt and water using reverse OUs Moses. Tampa Bay has a reverse us Moses desalination plant that produces twenty five million gallons of fresh water every day. It's also possible to boil salty water and condense the
resulting steam. This is traditional distillation. The heat needed to boil the water might come from solar energy, or the heat might come from a boiler and a co generation power plant, A traditional coal fired power plant or a nuclear power plant uses heat to create steam to power a steam turbine. As long as you're gonna be boiling, water anyway, you might as well boil salt water and
then condense the steam after it produces power. Another way to distill fresh water from saltwater is to use flash distillation, where the water boils in a vacuum chamber. Power is required for flash distillation, but it's less power than is required to boil that water at normal atmospheric pressures. If you need to desalinate a small amount of water for personal use, the water cone may be used. The sun heats a pan of seawater and freshwater condenses on a
clear plastic cone. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast us at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com home page