Method to remove salt from water (Not distillation or RO)

[ChaoticLlama]

Hello all.

I'm tutoring a high school student and am having trouble with a seemingly simple science project that was assigned: How to remove table salt from water. Having graduated as a Chemical Engineer, I said distillation! But the problem statement says you can't be that boring. Then I said reverse osmosis, thinking that would make for a great presentation (lots of good calculations to do and theory to discuss)... until I found the student has to actually perform the desalination process for the class. And RO units aren't that easy to build or operate with household materials.

So know I don't really know. I'm thinking some kind of liquid-liquid extraction or forced precipitation of the NaCl.

Any other "at home" desalination methods you can think of? Thanks!

 

[Borek]

Ion-exchange resin?

 

[ChaoticLlama]

IX Resin is a cool idea.

I don't suppose it's possible to do a "homemade" resin, so in that case from where would be a good place to purchase some that can exchange typical Na and Cl ions? (hopefully not to expensive!)

Thanks.