English

Desalination due to Electrical Image Forces

Soft Condensed Matter 2020-02-05 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

It will be shown that for a solution of salt dissolved in water in contact with a metallic wall, the concentration of salt ions (both positive and negative) within a few Angstroms of the wall can be large enough to exceed the solubility limit of the salt, as a result of electrical image charge forces. In addition, since the dielectric constant of water increases from 2.1 at the wall to 81 at about a nanometer from a solid wall, there will be an attractive image potential near the plane on which this increase of the dielectric constant occurs. The possible existence of these image potentials suggests that the salt can be removed from the water by making salt water flow between an array of parallel solid plates..

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.05359,
  title  = {Desalination due to Electrical Image Forces},
  author = {J. B. Sokoloff},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.05359},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

7 pages, one figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:47:53.379Z