Desalination Without Outside Pressure by Reverse Osmosis
The problem of our experiment was to see if we could desalinate sea water with osmotic membranes without applying outside pressure. The objective of our experiment was to find out how effective osmotic membranes work if outside pressure is not applied. We set up an osmotic membrane attached to a funnel, created sea water, and let this slowly drip through. To see if the membrane had a significant difference, we tested the sea water's salinity (using specific gravity) before and after it ran through the membrane. Our results showed that the after tests had lower salinity levels than we started with. We then ran a matched pairs t-test on the difference in specific gravity. We found that letting sea water drip through the osmotic membranes without applying pressure did have a significant effect.
Research Done By:
Ron Kozel
Paul K. Cousino High School
Emily Krause
Sterling Heights High School
Warren Consolidated Schools