The Effect of Neodymium Magnets on the Amount of Salt Filtered out of a Seawater Reverse Osmosis System

The purpose of this experiment was to test if the addition of neodymium magnets made a significant difference on the efficiency of a reverse osmosis machine in filtering salt out of imitation seawater (salt water with a concentration of 35 ppt). It was hypothesized that if more magnets are added to the solution, less salt would be able to pass through the system, thus the overall system readings would be lower. It was also hypothesized that the average salinity would decrease by at least 5 ppt. 1 liter of imitation seawater solution was put into the pressure tank on the water side. The pressure was preset to 30 psi and then the “seawater” was run through the system. After being forced through the system, the salinity of the water was then recorded using an optical refractometer that measured the grams of salt in one liter of water, also referred to as “parts per thousand”, but will be referred to as ppt throughout this paper. Levels of the independent variable measured the results of a 0-Magnet group, a 14-Magnet group, and a 28-Magnet group. An ANOVA test revealed that there was no statistical difference between the means, F(2,87)= 1.75, p\u3e0.05. It can be concluded that the neodymium magnets did not adversely or beneficially affect the machine’s efficiency at filtering salt out of the water, thus rejecting the hypothesis. These findings were not statistically significant, but with a few alterations to the procedures and to the materials, there is a possibility that a correlation between the two variable could be found