Desalination Breakthrough: Saving the Sea from Salt
A chemist finds a way to cut supersalty discharge and CO2 as the Middle East relies ever more on seawater desalination
Benyahia has simplified the process in part by aiming for sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) rather than sodium carbonate, thus reducing the needed chemical conversion steps to just two. In the presence of ammonia he reacts pure carbon dioxide with the waste brine from desalination, creating solid baking soda and ammonium chloride solution. In a second step he reacts the ammonium chloride solution with calcium oxide to produce calcium chloride solution and ammonia gas. Recovering the ammonia allows him to reuse it in the first step, reducing the cost of the process.
