Study on sea ice desalination technology

In winter in high-latitude oceans, there is a great amount of sea ice, which is being recognized as a new resource of fresh water. Different desalination methods including sea ice solid-state desalination and sea ice melt-water desalination were compared. In a centrifugal desalination experiment, rotation speed was one of the major controlling parameters. The best desalination result in terms of salinity was obtained at a rotational speed of 2000 rpm for a duration of 2–3 min. When sea ice was desalinated by slight-melting, environment temperature and time were the dominant factors. By using the reverse osmosis process, the total dissolved solids of sea ice melt-water could reach about 100 mg/L. The results indicate that methods of sea ice desalination could decrease sea ice salinity from 3‰–8‰ to 0.2‰–2‰ at a reasonable cost.