Research

While doing some research for our prototype in chemistry I found some interesting information regarding Sudanese water and irrigation sources. In total Sudan has 2.376 million square kilometers of land, but only a small portion of that land is irrigated. 18,630 square kilometers of Sudan's total area is irrigated. Those figures got me thinking. With such a small amount of irrigation, farming must be only possible within that area. So what does the rest of the country do? Although east Sudan as well as some of north and south Sudan has sources such as the red sea and the Nile rivers, the western part of the country, which includes Darfur, has to rely on small lakes, reservoirs and community wells as their water sources. All of these resources, including the seas, and rivers, have salt and most likely bacteria. For our desalination prototype we have to have a way to take all of the excess materials out of the water. The desalination technique that I was most interested in was electro dialysis reversal. This is when water is forced through a container with polarized charges which attract the sodium and chloride through a membrane leaving only fresh water. Then the problem of the bacteria is solved by an ultra violet light which kills most if not all of them. This technique intrigued me because the fact that the separation is on a molecular level is really interesting. Before today i had never heard of it before but my group and I are willing to try it and see what happens.



www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/su.html