Desalination of Seawater May be Our Answer

Desalination is a great way to help people. Many areas do not have fresh water resources such as rivers and lakes. Taking out the salt from seawater will provide lots of people. This is needed where there is not a lot of natural drinking water. “People are building the Carlsbad desalination project. When it is completed, the huge plant will turn as many as 56 million gallons of seawater each day into drinking

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

With the Pacific Ocean lining the California coast line some may ask why can’t sea water be filtered and used as a source of free water. This is actually an alternative that has been researched and even put into use in places such as the Netherlands, Aruba, the Middle East and even right here in the U.S. This process is called desalinating seawater. Saltwater in its pure form cannot be used for drinking water and is deadly to plants, however if it goes through the process of desalinating it can be used. With California desperate for water Carlsbad, California decided to construct a desalinating plant. An article on NBCNEWS website states that the plant can produce “50 million gallons of freshwater a day from the sea and pour it into a water system that serves 3.1 million people”

According to David Sedlak, we have made large progress in seawater desalination for the past 2 decades. The largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere that is built north of San Diego uses half of the energy use than Santa Barbara 25 years ago. One reason why Sea Water is a good way to save more groundwater because we do not have a lot of water, but lots of oil. Also seawater desalination is not always good, there is a negative side. It is energy intensive; that means that it will cause a lot more climate change, but that is the only negative thing David Sadlak had mentioned about seawater desalination; but so far the new seawater desalination plant uses half the energy it used to. This would help California because it would lower the amount of water that is pumped from the ground, therefore, seawater desalination is a possible solution for conserving more

With the water crisis being seen around the world, even right here in the United States, we need to explore other options to supply fresh water to the residents. One State, in particular, that raises concern is the state of California. An alternative method to supply water to residents could be the process of desalination. Desalination is when fresh water is made by using either seawater or brackish and eliminating the minerals and salts as a way to make the water safe for human and agriculture uses ( Kesieme et al., 2013). In recent years, we have seen an increase the in the number of desalination plants around the United States (fig 1). However, is the process of desalination the answer for the water crisis going on in California? As a

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

Today, desalination is a common process that's used in seaside cities and towns worldwide. There are more than 15,000 desalination plants around the world providing freshwater from salt and brackish water alike (Planet Green 2011). This number continues to grow as researchers work to improve the process, both in terms of cost effectiveness and energy efficiency (DSE 2011). But countries such as Australia, Israel and even the United States are continually adding desalination plants of various sorts into their water-management portfolios. The facilities are common in North Africa and the Mideast, where freshwater is scarce (Chandler 2008).

A desalination plant is a possible alternative to California’s need of consumable water. There is a course cons against desalination mainly affecting the marine environment for leaving highly concentrated saline water behind through the process but we should not fear it as it is a long term solution we cannot toss aside. Kerry Cavanaugh from Los Angeles Times mentions, “2,000 an acre foot, compared to about $1,000 an acre foot for imported water” (par. 3). This means that production of water through this process is cost efficient and seems rather illogical to spend more money into producing water; instead of importing it from another major source. The process cost is not a major step forward, but the idea of reaching out to import water is rather absurd. California is an arid state; we are the ones responsible for turning it into a paradise. In order to maintain it that way a method to lower the cost of desalination can be propose as solution. The thought

-Article 1- Ghaffour, N., M. Missimer, T., & L. Amy, G. (2013). Desalination (Technical review and evaluation of the economics of water desalination: Current and future challenges for better water supply sustainability) (Vol. 309, pp. 197-207). Thuwal.

Tampa Bay Water is a seawater desalination plant located in Tampa, Florida. Their method of desalination of ocean water or brackish groundwater is another method to obtaining water from fresh surfaces or groundwater sources. This could be used to replace the need for a water supply dam. There are several different technologies that exist to remove salt and other impurities from ocean water. The two most commonly used methods are thermal distillation and desalination. Thermal distillation copies the natural water cycle by using heat to create a vapor that is converted into freshwater. Desalination is a process that removes some amount of salt and other minerals from saline water. The traditional process used is vacuum distillation, which

Desalination is one of the more popular options being considered to attempt to terminate the drought. Desalination is a process through which salt water is pumped from the ocean in to a treatment facility, and then the salt is extracted to make it possible to be used domestically. This is a long drawn out process, which involves seven different steps. The steps of desalination include the

Though conservation is all and good, but the option of desalination has a flashier appeal. Tap the Pacific Ocean. Pump water from the ocean, remove the salt and drink. State officials are evaluating 15 proposed desal plants, and the largest such facility in the Western Hemisphere will open in Carlsbad this year.

1. There are two main sources of fresh drinking water, ground water and surface water. Ground water originates from precipitations that usually fall in the form of snow or rain. While, the surface water is also originates from precipitate that reaches the land surface and is then recharged into rivers, wetlands and lakes. Although these systems are usually reliable, in desperate time of need, a more reliable source of water is needed. The desalination plant is extremely valuable and flexible because it does not depend on rainfall. Instead, the desalination plant is the only source that relies on seawater. Using seawater in the desalination plant helps meet the community’s water needs and secures the water needs in the future. While other sources of water, such as rainwater or water from dames are not reliable enough to strictly rely

Desalination is the removal of salt and impurities from groundwater or seawater to produce fresh drinking water. Desalination is a secure water source that doesn’t depend on rainfall and has become a significant water source that has been strengthened through its decrease in production costs and related technological improvements. The process of Desalination is another means of securing Western Australia’s future water supply. Western Australia has two main plants, Perth Seawater Desalination Plant and Southern Seawater Desalination Plant, both of these plants deliver water to the Integrated Water Supply Scheme which supplies water to over 2 million people in Perth, parts of the South West, parts of the Agricultural region and the Kalgoorlie-Boulder

To solve water scarcity problem in the world, new technologies will be developed to decrease the cost of fresh water production and increase efficiency. In thermal desalination field, first with respect to the use of low-grade waste heat, various configurations of thermal desalination are investigated numerically. The new designs are compared with multi-effect distillation (MED) and recently proposed advanced MED schemes, namely boosted MED (BMED) and flash boosted MED (FBMED) on the basis of waste heat performance ratio, normalised pumping power consumption (NPPC) and specific capital cost. Afterwards, in phase two of research, for freezing desalination which has lower energy consumption compared to thermal desalination, fluidised bed implementation is investigated numerically, to solve the current problem in the commercialisation of this technology. In phase three, the feasibility of the multi-stream heat exchangers to effectively harness low-grade “waste heat” in the temperature range 65 °C – 90 °C is investigated. In phase four, with respect to previous experiences in design and commissioning of MED-TVC desalination, MED-TVC process will be simulated and validated by experimental data of a real desalination plant to improve the efficiency of current MED-TVC desalination plants. Finally, in the last stage of this research, for desalination technology without phase change, the