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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: how do they desalinate water to make it drinkable? Saltwater

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Speaker 1: from the ocean is undrinkable, and the same holds true

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Speaker 1: for brackish water. Of the water on Earth has salt

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Speaker 1: in it, and more than half of the fresh water

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Speaker 1: is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. So people

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Speaker 1: who need fresh water often look out at the ocean

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Speaker 1: and wonder if there's an easy way to remove the salt.

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Speaker 1: There are three common ways to do it. First, it's

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Speaker 1: possible to separate salt and water using reverse OUs Moses.

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Speaker 1: Tampa Bay has a reverse us Moses desalination plant that

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Speaker 1: produces twenty five million gallons of fresh water every day.

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Speaker 1: It's also possible to boil salty water and condense the

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Speaker 1: resulting steam. This is traditional distillation. The heat needed to

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Speaker 1: boil the water might come from solar energy, or the

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Speaker 1: heat might come from a boiler and a co generation

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Speaker 1: power plant, A traditional coal fired power plant or a

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Speaker 1: nuclear power plant uses heat to create steam to power

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Speaker 1: a steam turbine. As long as you're gonna be boiling,

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Speaker 1: water anyway, you might as well boil salt water and

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Speaker 1: then condense the steam after it produces power. Another way

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Speaker 1: to distill fresh water from saltwater is to use flash distillation,

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Speaker 1: where the water boils in a vacuum chamber. Power is

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Speaker 1: required for flash distillation, but it's less power than is

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Speaker 1: required to boil that water at normal atmospheric pressures. If

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Speaker 1: you need to desalinate a small amount of water for

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Speaker 1: personal use, the water cone may be used. The sun

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Speaker 1: heats a pan of seawater and freshwater condenses on a

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Speaker 1: clear plastic cone. Do you have any ideas or suggestions

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Speaker 1: for this podcast? If so, please send me an email

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Speaker 1: at podcast us at how stuff works dot com. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, go to

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check

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Speaker 1: out the brain stuff blog on the how stuff works

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