What is the process for recycling drinking water?

Desalinating salt water is one way arid regions are able to obtain drinking water.?

• a. Which has more entropy: a container of salt water or a container of fresh water plus a box of salt? b. Why does your answer to part a indicate that the desalination process requires either the conversion of ordered energy into thermal energy or the movement of heat from a hotter region to a colder region? c. One technique for desalination is reverse osmosis, in which salt water is squeezed through a special membrane that permits only pure water to pass. Show that squeezing water through this membrane takes work (ordered energy). d. Another technique for desalination is distillation, in which salt water is boiled in a hotter region to form water vapor that is then condensed to pure water in a colder region. This desalination process is a heat engine that separates the water from the salt. Explain why it's a heat engine. e. Still another desalination technique is freezing the salt water into pure ice and salt crystals. In this case the salt water has to be cooled to very low temperatures to freeze it, then warmed to a much higher temperature to melt it. Show that this technique is also using a heat engine to drive the desalination process.

• Answer:

  Try doing your own homework, you'll learn more :D