Arising from more and more severe environmental pollutions,fresh water resources suffering from being lack of supply,becomes a problem.Exploration of new technologies is of importance to effectively solve this situation,in particular those for desalination of seawater.In this manuscript,a home-made electrophoresis apparatus of vertical electric field,was applied to investigate the desalinat-ing synthetic seawater,on basis of chlorine anion.Effect of initial concentration of chlorine anion,re-tention time and applied voltage on the desalination ratio,energy efficiency(mass of migrated chlorine anion at positive electrode region per electric power)and distribution ratio was investigated.The elec-trophoresis apparatus has four outlet regions of positive region,negative region,central region,and ad-jacent region between two electrodes,of which central region represents target collection region for desalinating synthetic seawater.It showed that with an increase in initial concentration of chloride ani-on at inlet,the desalination ratio at central region reduced and the energy efficiency gradually in-creased,and the distribution ratio at positive region decreased,but that at the rest three regions in-creased.When retention time increased,the desalination ratio at central region apparently increased up to 69.5%,the energy efficiency gradually reduced,the distribution ratio at central region and negative region decreased,but that of positive region and adjacent region between two electrodes increased.If the applied voltage increased,the desalination ratio at central region gradually increased up to 13.9%,the energy efficiency slowly reduced,the distribution ratio at positive region increased,that at negative region and adjacent region between two electrodes slightly decreased,and that at central region in-creased and decreased afterward.