Salinity Essay

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SALINITY Water is a universal solvent. About 70% of the earth is covered with water. Over 97% of that water is found in the oceans. Oceans are salty. The presence of various salts in water makes it saline. Salinity refers to the concentration of salts in water. Near the equator the sun remains vertical through the year. Temperature remains always higher near equator. When temperature increases, the viscosity also increases due to the evaporation of water. As a consequence of it the salinity near the equator increases. Red sea is the most saline sea. Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf are also highly saline water bodies. Bay of Bengal in India is less saline because the water in it comes through the Himalayan Rivers. Salinity decreases from south to north. Desalination of the sea water is necessary to produce drinking water from it. A simple desalination process involves one inlet and two outlets. The highly saline water passes through the inlet. One of the outlet gives desalinated water while, the other one gives concentrated brine. In idea conditions, this technique requires 2.5 to 7 kj energy to produce 1 kg of fresh water. But, practically it requires more energy. The minimum energy required to remove the salinity of water is independent of technology because it’s a thermodynamic process. Various techniques have been invented to desalinate water. Membrane desalination technique and distilled desalination technique are the popular ones. Distillation is a physical process while RO is a mechanical process. Rivers osmosis, electro-dialysis, capacitive deionization and Nano-filtration are the membrane techniques. The distillation techniques are MSF (multi stage flash), MED (multi effect distillation), vapor compression and solar thermal distillation. MSF is a thermal process. In MSF technique the running saline water is heated by the boiler. The steam obtained is

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