Nano-Gadget Holds the Salt
We have often looked at desalination technology as a source for future ideas of mitigating any possible environmental impacts of salt from winter maintenance or water softening operations. With the advent of nano-technology, high hopes were pinned on the potential for this branch of applied science to contribute a solution. Now a team has created a salt-removing gadget so small that hundreds of them could fit onto a penny. Ion Channel Polarization or ICP has been around for years, but never applied to desalination. With ICP, a liquid with charged and neutral ions, such as seawater, is run through a channel. Along the channel is an electrical potential that repels charged particles. This causes the liquid to split, creating one stream with charged particles and another with neutral particles. A review on the research can be found at ScienceMagazine .
