Do you know why seagulls can drink seawater?-Hezhong Environment (Beijing) Co., Ltd. was established in 2003

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Do you know why seagulls can drink seawater?

Published Time:

2022-07-07

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Seagulls are seabirds that often live in harbors. In addition to eating fish, shrimp, crabs, and shellfish, they also scavenge leftover food discarded by people on ships. Therefore, they are known as "cleaners of the sea." But do you know why seagulls can drink seawater?

In the 1950s, an American scientist observed seagulls and discovered that they could drink seawater to quench their thirst. This puzzled him, as lung-breathing animals are absolutely unable to drink seawater with such a high salt content. After research, he found that when seagulls drink seawater, they use a reverse osmosis biomembrane organ evolved by themselves. Using the pressure in their mouths, they squeeze water molecules through a thin membrane in their crop into their bodies, filtering it into freshwater. Then, they spit out the water containing salt and impurities from their mouths, thus drinking seawater to quench their thirst. The mucous membrane tissue in the seagull's throat is the prototype of the reverse osmosis membrane.

In the 1980s, RO reverse osmosis technology emerged. It began to be applied in water pollution caused by industrial and agricultural development. The pore size of the reverse osmosis membrane in wastewater treatment plants is one five-millionth of a human hair, or 0.0001 micrometers. The size of bacteria and viruses is 5000 times larger than this pore size. Impurities larger than viruses, such as inorganic salts, organic matter, and heavy metal ions, can be effectively removed by the RO reverse osmosis membrane. Therefore, reverse osmosis membranes are widely used in the fields of electricity, petrochemicals, steel, electronics, medicine, food and beverages, municipal administration, and environmental protection. They play an important role in seawater and brackish water desalination, boiler feed water, industrial pure water and drinking pure water production, wastewater treatment, and special separation processes. The popularization of this research has greatly helped our production and life.