Desalination technology provides freshwater for regions with water scarcity problems and can prevent from over-using natural water resources. However, operating the plants may have some environmental, social, and economic issues.
4.1 Environmental Impacts
¥ The marine environment can be affected by physical and chemical waste from the plants. Impacts can be caused by pollutant concentrations.
¥ Pollutant concentrations cause constant impacts within a local mixing zone until they are decreased to harmless level. The acute impact zone depends on the rate of the brine in the sea water.
¥ Pollutants can cause constant impacts and long-term effects if the accumulation rate exceeds the natural decomposition rate.
¥ Increase in salinity and temperature
…show more content…
¥ Over-relying on seawater desalination can create dependencies. In the case of chemical accidents or oil spills which affect the seawater, the plant would have to be shut down and water supply might collapse.
¥ The use of desalination can lead to water wastage by creating the impression that water is sufficiently available and that capacities can easily be enlarged.
¥ Negative environmental impacts of desalination can cause social and economic problems. Decrease in seawater and air quality may result in the loss of recreational areas and possible health problems. The fishery industry can suffer from reduced fish populations and the tourist industry can suffer from environmental pollution and industrial activities.
¥ Due to the high operating cost, the use of desalination technology in poor countries is restrictive.
One reason for the opposing opinions is related to the socio-economic benefits of desalination. Seawater desalination contributes to economic and population growth and supplies fresh water to many of the water scarce countries. However, western countries still have enough alternative sources and the benefits of desalination will still be a privilege for richer countries. Even if desalination can be more cost-efficient than the overuse of natural resources, the high operation cost of desalination is a major problem for the poor
To start off, the plant is not very trustworthy. Secondly, the desalination plant can harm different forms of marine life. Finally, the discharge water creates a hazard.
The issue of building desalination plants has been a hot topic of Californians in the past couple decades because researchers knew that our available surface and groundwater supplies are becoming scarce. This problem is important because California is home to a large population of people as well as extensive agricultural and industrial productions that need vast amounts of water. With the reduction in available ground and fresh water brings other problems that need to be addressed. Many farmers are having to impose stricter management policies in regards to how they use the water the pay so much for. Crops sensitive to the amount of water they receive or do not receive can be destroyed in a short amount of time if neglected of water. With the amount of fresh water accumulated by both snow melt of California’s mountains as well as ground water retrieved from wells and pumps being depleted faster than we can recharge those sources, farmers face further impacts. An article by Robert Glennon, “Unquenchable: Americas water crisis and what to do about it” says “In the summer of 2009, California is facing mandatory water rationing. Many farmers may be entirely cut off, costing the economy more than $1 billion and putting more
This is so because, in the article,“California tries one solution to water problems — treating seawater,”on page 2 it says, “Unless that intake is carefully designed, it can harm marine life. Reverse-osmosis filters are so fine that they allow only water to pass, everything else entering the desalination plant is killed.” Also on page 2 it says, “Carlsbad, for example, will use fish screens with tiny openings. These will strain out at least 95 percent of small fish, but only 20 percent of organisms. The remaining 80 percent of tiny organisms (including fish eggs) will be sucked into the desalination plant and killed. Many small life forms that fish depend on for food would be destroyed.” Also on page 2 it says, “The desalination industry worldwide largely favors screened intakes, despite the damage they cause. They are cheaper to build than the alternative favored by the water board (so-called subsurface intakes.)”This shows how because of the huge cost we are getting cheaper things that harm and even kill some marine
However, due to the long lasting drought in California we should heavily consider this method of producing clean water. In other parts of the world such as China, India, Australia, Spain and more they have been able to produce nearly fourteen billion gallons of drinking water through this process. The largest desalination plant in the world is located in Saudi Arabia and produces two hundred and seventy three million gallons of drinking water per day. If the United States is able to perfect this, it could fix the situation. Amanda Little does an excellent job of sharing a wide array of perspectives of desalination in her article “Can Desalination Counter The Drought”. For instance she describes the discusses the standpoint of the executive director of the California Coast keeper Alliance, Sara Aminzadeh, as she argues, “It’s just not a good option from a cost and energy standpoint.” She goes on to say, “Desalination may seem like a panacea, but it’s the worst deal out there.” Although this method may not be cost or energy efficient, this may be the only plausible method of producing clean water. As seen in Saudi Arabia this is an efficient form of creating clean water and due to the lack of resources, this may be California’s last
Imagination overcomes reason at times of strange and unexplained circumstances allowing for fear to enter the mind and people to act irrationally, or instinctively. In House Taken Over, we are introduced to two siblings who seem to live in a large, empty house and go through every day with a dull repetitive routine. Notwithstanding, this changes when they find themselves faced with an ominous threat. The first time this happened the siblings react on instinct and panic. They seclude themselves in the unpenetrated part of their house, uneasy at the thought of what could be lurking on the other side. Thusly, after a second infiltration, this time to the main part of the house, they abandon the house running instinctively to escape while they are taking over.
While desalination, is indeed an effective long-term solution, it isn 't necessarily the most cost competitive method, because it can cost four to eight times more expensive than alternative solutions.
Desalination has been used for hundreds of decades, Greek sailors heated water to evaporate fresh water away from the salt and other minerals, and the Romans used some clay filters to trap salt. Today's urbane methods still mostly use the concepts of distillation or filtration. The procedure of desalinating sea water to produce drinkable fluid has a long and gorgeous history. Nevertheless, the first significant modern desalination process to perform was multi-stage flash distillation type (MSF) it is a process that originally started during the mid-20th century in the USA (1955). Moreover, even though multi-effect distillation had been revealed and had the potential to be more effective than multi-stage flash desalination (MSF), it took a
Desalination is the process of removing dissolved salts from water which makes it more useful and it makes it so if you drink the water you will not dehydrate faster and die.The water after the desalination process is utilised for drinking water , crops like corn and wheat , showers , washers , municipal / potable use and for agricultural irrigation but is also used extensively in many other applications where high quality water is required .
Desalination is basically the procedure of separating excess sodium chloride, minerals and impurities from sea and ocean water to make it usable for irrigation and human consumption. It has been touted to rid the world of its current water problems for nearly 5 decades now, during this period huge strides have been made in the desalination technology. These advances have made it possible to venture into desalination as the long term option to the water problem in many parts of the world. It is seen as long term since the ocean is not going anywhere anytime soon as compared to lakes and rivers that have been going dry seasonally. The state of California is not new to the water shortage problem; as stated above tit has been a witness to previous droughts. It is therefore time to consider a long term solution to this problem.
If residents and corporations throughout the United States continue to frivolously waste water and refuse to make painless changes and upgrades around their homes, it will continue to increase in cost to people across the United States. For example, as a result of the water shortage crisis currently afflicting the southwestern United States, the city of San Diego, California, is currently constructing a desalination plant, located in Carlsbad, California. The idea of a desalination plant is to collect undrinkable saltwater from the ocean and, using reverse osmosis and other filtering techniques, remove the salt to produce clean, potable water (Barnett). However, there are many downsides to relying on desalination practices to provide for a city the size of San Diego. First and foremost, it is considerably more expensive to produce clean drinking water from saltwater as opposed to using regular surface water or groundwater. The act of filtering the water alone can be twice as expensive as traditional filtration methods. In addition, desalination plants consume much more energy than traditional treatment plants, mostly due to the fact that the filtration methods are much more involved. Desalination consumes twice as much power as recycled plants, and four times as much as pumping groundwater (Newell, Roohk and Reardon). For example, the Carlsbad plant alone will require the same amount of electricity as is used to power 125,000 homes in California. However, the biggest
One of the significant drawbacks of desalination is that it is enormously vitality eager and costly at the tune of $2,000 a section of land foot, and there's something without
Water scarctiy is something that far too many coutries face. Everyday countries in Africa, the Middle East, India, and China face the detrimental challenges of not having enough water to provide to their population. Over the years there have been many propositions as to how we can help resolve this issue and restore countries access to clean water. However one process has remained. This is known as Water Desalination. Water Desalination is a process that was introduced many years ago to continents and countries located near the equator such as Africa, Asia, the Middle East, India, and China which are located on or near the solar belt. It has proven to help bring a substantial amount of clean water to these countries and to overall help deplinish
Water desalination processes separate dissolved salts and other minerals from water. Feed water sources may include brackish, seawater, wells, surface (rivers and streams), wastewater, and industrial feed and process waters. Membrane separation requires driving forces including pressure (applied and vapor), electric potential, and concentration to overcome natural osmotic pressures and effectively force water through membrane processes. As such, the technology is energy intensive and research is continually evolving to improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption.
Water is a very essential component of living things on this world. It comprises three quarters of earth. We need fresh water for agriculture, drinking, medical and many other different purposes. But the renewable fresh water supply is less than 0.3% which is not enough [2]. It is really very hard to get fresh water for people who live near coastal areas to travel very long and get water for them. That is the reason why desalination came into existence where seawater is used as a source to produce potable water for use. The population grown bothered more for the demand of more fresh water. The fresh water resources like rivers, lakes are slowly getting lost or either getting salty [6]. There were several different approaches of desalinating the seawater to
Desalination is the process in which excess salt water and other minerals are removed from water to make it consumable (Rosadoi, Moraisii, 2010). This source of water is very expensive to operate in rural areas of Kenya because the materials and running cost is on the high side. It has a lot of environmental impact, positively it is an additional source of water supply and it helps to keep the groundwater aquifers from going dry however the side effect of desalination is that it leads to the emission of greenhouse gases, large production of concentrated brine, discharge of salt by-product which is harmful to people residing around. Water born diseases will be reduced drastically and also creates job opportunities due to large industrial plants for processing. Source of steady electricity power to make this plant work will be a major concern and a large number of inhabitants make lack the technological knowledge to operate the desalination plants.