Scientists cook up new recipes for taking salt out of seawater
(PHYSorg.com Chemistry)

As populations boom and chronic droughts persist, coastal cities like Carlsbad in Southern California have increasingly turned to ocean desalination to supplement a dwindling fresh water supply. Now scientists at the Department of Energy`s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) investigating how to make desalination less expensive have hit on promising design rules for making so-called `thermally responsive` ionic liquids to separate water from salt.