Why is it so difficult to turn sea water in to drinkable water?
In: Chemistry
The bigest problem is the size of thesalt molecules in sea water – they are so small that we can’t just filter them out normally. The flow would be minimal, since even the water molecules would have trouble getting trough. We counter this by forcing the water trought the filter (pressuring it) which requires a lot of energy. This is the reason obtaining drinking watter this way (which is called “reverse osmosis” by the way) is so innefficient and not wide spread allready. It works nicely, but it’s just not cheap.
ELI5: we filter seawater, but the size difference between water and salt is so small, the filter can cloth easily, we use preassure to counter this but it requires energy and money in turn
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