When I was little, my sister and I would have contests "M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i" the fastest. When I was in elementary school, I got to learn about the early explorers Marquette and Joliet, and how they used and its tributaries and to map a trade route. In graduate school, I was fortunate to have outside my research laboratory window at the University of Minnesota. During that five-year period, I got to know its temperamental nature and where it would flood. And then shortly thereafter, you would see its dry shorelines. Today, as a physical organic chemist, I'm committed to use my training to help protect rivers, from excessive salt. Because, you know, salt is something that can contaminate. And freshwater rivers. And at this level, it's safe to drink. But the majority of the water and ocean water has a salinity level. And if you drank that. So, if we are to compare to that of the river water and let's say we are able into an Olympic-size swimming pool, then our planet's river water. So you can see it's a precious resource. But do we treat it. Or rather, do we treat it that you put in your front doorway. Treating rivers like that old rug. Let's take a look. Let's see what just one teaspoon. If we add one teaspoon of salt to this Olympic-size, the ocean water stays ocean water. But if we add that same to this one-gallon jug, suddenly, it becomes too salty to drink. So the point here is, because rivers, the volume is so small, it is especially vulnerable, and we need to take care to protect them. So recently, I surveyed the literature to look at the river health. And I fully expected to see in regions of water scarcity. And I saw that. But I was surprised where there's 232 river-sampling sites sampled across the United States. And of those sites, 37 percent had increasing salinity levels. What was more surprising is that the ones were found on the east part and not the arid southwest. The authors of this paper postulate that this could be due. Potentially, another source of this salt could come from salty. So as you see, human activities into water that's more like our oceans. So we need to act and do something. And I have a proposal. We can take a three-step. And if industrial-water users we can put our rivers. This involves, number one, extracting less water from our rivers by implementing water recycle. Number two, we need to take the salt and recover it and reuse it. And number three, who currently source our salt from mines into salt consumers that source our salt. This three-part defense mechanism. This is what northern China to help to rehabilitate the rivers. But the proposal here is to use this defense mechanism so we don't need to rehabilitate them. And the good news is. It's with membranes. Membranes that can separate. Membranes have been around and they're based on polymeric materials or they can separate based on charge. The membranes that are used typically separate based on charge. And these membranes and help to repel the negatively that are in that dissolved salt. So, as I said, these membranes and currently, they are purifying. Even more than that, actually. But they can do more. These membranes are based. Now osmosis is this natural process you know, how our cells work. And osmosis is where you have two chambers that separate two levels. One with low salt concentration and one with high salt concentration. And separating the two chambers. And under the natural osmosis process, what happens is the water naturally from the area of low salt concentration to the area of high salt concentration, until an equilibrium is met. Now reverse osmosis. And in order to achieve this reversal, what we do is we apply a pressure. And in doing so, we drive the water. And so the high-concentration side more concentrated, and the low-concentration side. So using reverse osmosis, and convert up to 95 percent of it leaving only five percent. Now, this five percent is not waste. So scientists have also that are modified to allow and not others. Using these membranes, which are commonly referred to now this five percent can be converted. So, in total, using reverse osmosis we can convert industrial wastewater into a resource of both water and salt. And in doing so, achieve pillars one and two. Now, I've introduced this and the common response is, "Yeah, but who is going to use my salt?" So that's why pillar number three. We need to transform folks into consumers of recycled salt. So who are these salt consumers? Well, in 2018 in the United States, I learned that 43 percent of the salt was used for road salt deicing purposes. Thirty-nine percent. So let's take a look. So, I was shocked. In the 2018-2019 winter season, one million tons of salt was applied to the roads. One million tons of salt is enough to fill two-thirds. That's one million tons of salt applied to our roads, and then it washes off. So the proposal here source that salt from a salty and prevent that and rather use that to apply to our roads. So at least when the melt happens and you have this high-salinity runoff, the rivers are at least to defend themselves against that. Now, as a chemist, the opportunity though is the concept of introducing. And the chlor-alkali industry is perfect. Chlor-alkali industry it's the source of urethanes and solvents and a lot of useful products. And it uses sodium chloride salt. So the idea here is, well, first of all. So in a linear economy, it goes through this chlor-alkali process, made into a basic chemical, which then can get converted or a more functional product. But during that conversion process, oftentimes salt is regenerated and it ends up. So, the idea is that we can and we can recycle the water and salt from the factories, and we can send it to the front end Circular salt. So how impactful is this? Well, let's just take one example. Fifty percent of the world's is made through the chlor-alkali process. And that's a total of about five million on an annual basis, made globally. So that's five million tons of salt converted through the chlor-alkali process and then during that process, five million tons of salt. So five million tons is enough salt to fill. And that's on an annual basis. So you can see how circular salt to our rivers from this excessive. So you might wonder, "Well, gosh, these membranes so why aren't people implementing." Well, the bottom line is, it costs money to implement. And second, water in these regions is undervalued. Until it's too late. You know, if we don't plan there are some severe consequences. You can just ask one of the world's who last year took due to low river levels. You can ask the residents who experienced a year-over-year drought and then being asked. So you can see, we have solutions here, with membranes, where we can provide pure water, we can provide pure salt, using these membranes, both of these, to help to protect our rivers. Thank you.