Subject: Can dissolved substances in water be removed magnetically?

I remember in 1st year chemistry once, we had a quiz where one of the sections 
was devoted to ways of removing dissolved salt from water. After answering all 
of the mundane ways of doing it (eg boiling the water, centrifuging it etc) 
there was a bonus question asking if there were any other ways of doing it. I 
answered that perhaps using super strong electromagnets we could separate the 
na and cl ions given that they are charged particles. The lecturer thought it 
was interesting and (luckily for me!) gave me marks for it. That said, how 
feasible is something like this? What would happen if we tried this? Can we 
get magnets powerful enough to do it in the first place?
 

Re: Can dissolved substances in water be removed magnetically?