#GoodNews: Indian Teen Finds a Way To Make Saltwater Drinkable

Chaitanya Karamchedu’s discovery can impact millions of lives if ever implemented on a mass scale.

(Photo: Reuters)

An Indian-American teenager has found a cheaper and easier method to turn salt water into drinkable fresh water.

Chaitanya Karamchedu, a student of Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon, has caught the attention of major technology firms and universities with his experiment.

The teen told KPTV that he wants to change the world.

“One in 8 people do not have access to clean water. It is a pressing issue that needs to be addressed. The best access to water is the sea. Around 70 percent of the planet is covered by water and almost all of that is the ocean, but the problem is that this is all salt water”

“Scientists looked at desalination, but it’s still inaccessible and would cost a lot to implement on a large scale,” Karamchedu said.

Isolating drinkable water from the ocean in a cost-effective way is a problem that has stumped scientists for years. The teen’s breakthrough is estimated to impact millions of lives if ever implemented on a mass scale.

“The genesis of the idea was realising that sea water is not fully saturated with salt,” he said.

By experimenting with a highly absorbent polymer, the teenager discovered a cost-effective way to remove salt from ocean water and turn it into fresh water. “It’s not bonding with water molecules, it’s bonding to the salt,” said Karamchedu.

“People have been looking at the problem from one view-point, how do we break those bonds between salt and water? He came in and thought about it from a completely different angle,” said Jesuit High School Biology teacher Lara Shamieh.

People were concentrating on that 10 percent of water that’s bonded to the salt in the sea and no one looked at the 90 percent that was free. He just looked at it and said if 10 percent is bonded and 90 percent is free, then why are we so focussed on this 10 percent, let’s ignore it and focus on the 90

Lara Shamieh, Jesuit High School Biology teacher

“Compared to current techniques, it’s cheap and accessible to everyone,” said Shamieh.

Karamchedu won a $10,000 award from the US Agency for International Global Development at Intel’s International Science Fair and second place at MIT’s TechCon Conference where he won more money to continue his research.

They were very encouraging, they could see things into it that I couldn’t, because they’ve been working on this all their life

Karamchedu

In January, Karamchedu was named one of 300 Regeneron Science Talent Search Semifinalists. The STS is thought to be one of the most prestigious competitions in the country for high school seniors.