Question

Sea water has salt dissolved in it. You know that pure water can be obtained from sea water by distillation. However, this method is not used to get drinking water from sea water. What do you think is teh reason?

Answer 1

Sea water has salt dissolved in it and pure water can be obtained by distillation. However, the energy required to heat large quantities of sea water to make this process widely applicable is too expensive. Also, the condensers required are very expensive if they are to be sized large enough to distill vast quantities of sea water. As a result, distillation is not used to get drinking water from sea water.