Seawater

Seawater in the Strait of Malacca, Peninsular Malaysia

Seawater is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L). This means that every kilogram (roughly one litre by volume) of seawater has approximately 35 grams (1.2 oz) of dissolved salts, most of which would be Sodium Chloride / table salt.

Consumption

Seawater is not safe to drink straight after collection. The salt content will pull water from you as it passes through, drying you out, and the ocean is full of microorganisms that can make you very ill, or in extreme cases, deathly so. However, seawater can be prepared to make it safe to drink via, among others, evaporation, distillation, and filtration.

Salt can be extracted from seawater by using a heat source to boil off the water and thus leave behind powdered salt. In small amounts, this salt can be safely added to food.

Dependencies

• Chloride
• Sodium
• Water
  • Seawater

See also

• Ice
• Snow
• Water filter

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Seawater, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).