Essay

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).

-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.

The advantages of desalination represents an opportunity to use oceanic water resources. If the appropriate conditions are present, a desalination plant could potentially be used to replace an existing or future dam. As existing sources of useable water run dry, desalination is a very effective, alternative source of water. On top of that the distillation process produces one of the highest quality water, with a range of 1 to 50 ppm tds, tds is also known as total dissolved solids. With the recommended California standard being 500 ppm, this quality of water is far beyond any other water quality seen before.

The first method, distillation, is the process of heating water to its boiling point, collecting the steam, and condensing the purified water vapor. The process is usually repeated a few times to ensure success in purification (Ocean Water Desalination). Distillation uses the property of higher boiling points in salts than in pure water. Possible contaminants that require removal for safe water consumption could include bacteria, lead, mercury, sodium, and chlorine. After boiling the water, water vapor moves through a series of tubes to a separate container where the heat source is removed, and the water is able to condense, now purified. Some strengths of distillation include the removal of heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury, the removal of hardening agents such as calcium and phosphorus, and the removal of bacteria from water by heating. This elimination of bacteria is especially helpful in developing countries due to the increased risk of contamination because of unsanitary conditions. In this process, consideration needs to be given for adequate resources and infrastructure to deliver purified water to the general population of underdeveloped areas. A few disadvantages exist in that distillation does not remove chlorine and is relatively ineffective as the input is about five times the output (Water Treatment Alternatives -

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

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.

Much of the population has agreed that society might be forced to resort to this in the future; however, this project should truly be initiated now. Recently, a desalination plant was opened in San Diego for about $1 billion (Rogers). With the current technology being used, this plant and others like it will simply not produce enough water to make it worth the cost. However, scientific advancement may someday make desalinization more efficient and reasonably priced, allowing it to pose as a feasible solution to the water supply

When examining the process of desalination there are several advantages and disadvantages of the process that need to be examined, starting with the advantages. One of the major advantages of this process according to Gude (2016) is having the option to use renewable energy for the process instead of using fossil fuels. He states this is better for our environment and there will always be access to the wind, solar, or wave energy being produced compared to our fossil fuels which already are at a risk of running out. Haddad has also stated that renewable energy resources are better for our environment compared to fossil fuels, as they reduce our carbon footprint and the risk of climate change. Another advantage that can

As reported by Khanafer & Vafai (2013) the desalination comes in the forward consumer for the energy, which will be useful as a consequences for the solar system which is considered as as example for the one of the nanotechnology benefits. To explain that, people in many countries have struggled form unsuitable water, as a result they have built many factories to desalinate the most important resource for their life. These factories rely on the heaters and condensers to produce clean water which is in turn to consume the thermal energy whatever was the source of this energy. In addition, the nano technological improvement will affect directly the process of desalination.

Nuclear power is one of the most controversial forms of energy in the modern world; the destructive power of nuclear armaments has led to a worldwide fear of nuclear energy in all of its forms. But as scientific communities continue to learn more about nuclear power, as well as ways to make it more practical in the competitive energy market, it may soon see an increase in use in the United States. This necessitates the consideration of possible improvements to nuclear power plants that would warrant an increase in their use. If the United States is to invest its money and time into nuclear power, it must first evaluate the potential improvements to plant efficiency, maintenance, and other factors,

filters and water systems. Desalination is one of the many ways of providing the world with clean, and non-contaminated water. The many types of desalinating water provides the world with only one percent of its total water demands, yet the companies running these plants are worth an estimated 87 billion dollars combined. Desalinated water is easy to create, and works extremely effectively, but the amount of energy needed is costly. It is an easy source of clean drinking water for humans, but may have a bad effect on the planet in future years.

Australia, as the driest inhabited continent, had installed 331 desalination plants supplying high quality water to the increasing population. Another country, China, also implete the use of desalination plants to tackle the drought and large population problems. This section will compare several technologies used in these two countries. As shown in Table 1, RO is the most used technology in both countries, accounting for 61.03% in Australia and 81.3% in China.

In the conduction of my experiment, I tested four different theories to verify whether or not the result was desalinized water. Testing four different theories allowed me to differentiate the method’s efficiency and effectiveness, so that I could determine who and where it would be best suited. The goal was to desalinize water using every day, household materials to maintain the cost effective aspect of the project.

Desalination, as a technique of its own, has its own overall negatives. It is known to require a large expanse of energy to start up and power the desalination plants. Consequently, this also results in it being extremely expensive since the majority of its current power sources are derived from the burning of fossil fuels. Thus it is not cost efficient nor is it always environmentally friendly.