Unlike some other approaches to desalination, this one requires little infrastructure, so it might be useful for portable systems used in remote locations, or for emergencies where water supplies are disrupted by storms or earthquakes.
With clean water in short supply around the world, new methods to treat salty, brackish and contaminated water are being developed all the time. MIT has invented a unique way to shock water clean. With shock electrodialysis, water flows through a porous material with membranes or electrodes sandwiching the porous material on each side. A shockwave is generated that sharply divides the streams and allows the fresh and salty regions to be separated by a physical barrier at the center of the flow. This system not only removes salt, but a wide variety of other contaminants as well. And, because of the electrical current passing through, it may also sterilize the stream. Shock electrodialysis opens up a whole range of new possibilities for water desalination, both for seawater and for brackish water resources, like groundwater.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
