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desalination
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water. More generally,desalination may also refer to the removal of salts and minerals,[1] as in soil desalination.[2][3]
Water is desalinated in order to be converted to fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. It is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of fresh water is limited.
Large-scale desalination typically uses extremely large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or groundwater. The large energy reserves of many Middle Eastern countries, along with their relative water scarcity, have led to extensive construction of desalination in this region. By mid-2007, Middle Eastern desalination accounted for close to 75% of total world capacity.[4]
The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It is a dual-purpose facility that uses multi-stage flash distillation and is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.
The largest desalination plant in the United States is the one at Tampa Bay, Florida, which began desalinating 25 million gallons (US Gal.) (95000 m³) of water per day in December 2007.[5] The Tampa Bay plant runs at around 12% the output of the Jebel Ali Desalination Plants. A January 17, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal states, "World-wide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association."[6]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
Seawater Desalination in California
www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water. More generally,desalination may also refer to the removal of salts and minerals,[1] as in soil desalination.[2][3]
Water is desalinated in order to be converted to fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. It is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of fresh water is limited.
Large-scale desalination typically uses extremely large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or groundwater. The large energy reserves of many Middle Eastern countries, along with their relative water scarcity, have led to extensive construction of desalination in this region. By mid-2007, Middle Eastern desalination accounted for close to 75% of total world capacity.[4]
The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It is a dual-purpose facility that uses multi-stage flash distillation and is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.
The largest desalination plant in the United States is the one at Tampa Bay, Florida, which began desalinating 25 million gallons (US Gal.) (95000 m³) of water per day in December 2007.[5] The Tampa Bay plant runs at around 12% the output of the Jebel Ali Desalination Plants. A January 17, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal states, "World-wide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association."[6]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
Seawater Desalination in California
www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html
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Re: desalination
Mon, October 26, 2009 - 12:54 PMfascinating. . .i wonder what the potential is for running desalinization plants by solar power. . .i hope someone is finding out about that in a hurry. . -
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Re: desalination
Mon, October 26, 2009 - 12:54 PMthere are countries that are going to run out of fresh water in our lifetime. .
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Re: desalination
Tue, October 27, 2009 - 9:44 AMInteresting coincidence, I just finished reading an article called "Running Dry" for a project at work, from the EPRI Journal. There's a section discussing the cost break even point for power generation facilities and their water usage.
I believe the highest uses of water in the US are irrigation (80%) and domestic use (7%).
Lorenzo, in response to your question on solar power, www.maineseasalt.com/. -
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Re: desalination
Tue, October 27, 2009 - 3:32 PMinteresting link, but their object is to produce sea salt. it might be another whole matter to affordably produce the water needed by new england, for example. -
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Re: desalination
Thu, October 29, 2009 - 11:13 AMYes, their object is to produce sea salt, but is an example of what could be done with waste salt without additional energy cost.
I doubt that affordably producing water by desalination for new england would ever really be feasible. For the most part, New England has plenty of water to meet current demand so they aren't looking for outside sources very seriously yet. Not like, say the Great Lakes Region passing that water bill a few years ago stating that water in the Great Lakes Basin belongs into the Great Lakes Basin. This is probably to keep other areas with water shortages from claiming their water. New England is just not sunny enough to reliably be able to power desalination plants. Not to mention infrastructure needed to transport water from the desalinazation plant into the distribution system. I think a better example would be California. Sunny, on the coast, desert areas with high water shortage and water demand. While I have never verified the calculations, one of my professors in grad school said that more water evaporates off of Lake Mead than is used by its users every day. (can anyone confirm or bust this?)
Most of the water in the US is used for irrigation anyway. Domestic use is really a very small part.
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Re: desalination
Sun, November 1, 2009 - 6:50 PMWhen it rains over an ocean, it's not salt rain is it? -
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Re: desalination
Sun, November 1, 2009 - 7:58 PMNo, it is the same that drops anywhere. The only difference is local crap in the air.
Probably the most efficient desalination plant is a simple trough evaporator (solar still) where you just focus the suns rays on a body of water to evaporate the water to water vapour. The gotcha is you then need a cooler surfaces for the water vapour to condense on, then run down into a fresh water collecting trough. This is using the suns rays directly without the inefficencies and cost of PV collection, battery storage, then pumps, filters, etc, etc. -
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Re: desalination
Wed, November 4, 2009 - 5:58 PMI have a great book that talks about making a small solar still for a Sailboat. Forget what he used to cool the vapors but I think it would just collect on the top of the still and then drain down into storage. They are pretty easy to make
It would be friggin sweet to go to a remote place that would need this technology for daily life and show them it. I'm sure you can make stills out of local materials pretty much anywhere, right?
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