Water Desalination

-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 Perth Desalination plant cost a total of $387 million. The annual running costs equals $20 million which equates to less than one dollar per week per household. The water produced from the plant has been estimated to cost $1.17/kl. The plant uses 180GWh/year and is sourced from Emu Downs Wind Farm, a local renewable energy generator near Geraldton and Cervantes. Although Desalination uses more energy than other water sources (i.e. gravity feeding water out of a dam). Different measures have been put in place to make the plant as economical and environmentally sustainable such as using energy from a sustainable source and by choosing the Reverse Osmosis technology. Reverse Osmosis is more economical and environmentally sustainable than other

The water-energy tradeoff with desalination is apparent than any other options, given its energy intensity. Table 5.5 compiled some indicators to illustrate the resource features in provinces with desalination capacity. The majority of the present capacity is located in the most water and energy stressed provinces along the east coast. Desalination might be pursuable in some remote southern island, where freshwater availability has posed a constraint on basic human need. But it is still debatable whether large-scale desalination is a good choice for the water deficient north. From the nexus perspective, investing in more desalination projects in water-energy stressed areas could worsen their power shortage by adding more demand.

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

The earth seems is drying up in certain areas of the world at the moment. We have already seen some of the hottest summers on record in the last decade. Summer 2016 was the hottest summer on record since the records were started back in 1880 (Doyle, 2016). The effects of this heat have manifested themselves as drought in areas of the western United States. One of those areas happens to be our home of Southern California. Water resources have slowly declined and conservation has been the key tool to battle the decline. In an effort to find new ways of conserving or creating fresh water supplies, technology has been called upon. The need for technology that can help us meet our fresh water demands becomes more important every day. One of the technologies that has gotten a lot of attention recently is desalination. In fact a large scale desalination plant was just opened in Carlsbad, Ca. The facility is capable of delivering 50 million gallons per day (MGD) (Bienkowski, 2015). Despite this impressive achievement the plant still only accounts for 8% of the total water demand in San Diego County (CDP, 2016). In this paper I will explain the process of desalination, identify a promising new technology, and provide a comparison of technologies.

As world population increases along with demand for clean water desalination will become an increasingly important part of our water supply in the 21st century. We will not run out of water but we will pay more for receiving it in potable

Freshwater is the most essential renewable resource for life, food production and industrial development. It is expected in the future soon the clean water resources will be deducted by one-third. The difficulty to purify water and the high cost to transport aggravates the problem of water deficits. Therefore, the exploitation of seawater and brackish-water desalination has drawn unprecedented attention. Desalination is a possibility choice to produce drinking water from Saline water, although most desalination processes are energy-consuming and expensive. The main desalination technologies currently used are reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, and distillation. A drawback of the conventional desalination technologies is the intensive consumption of energy. Whereas, energy consumption has increased with an enormous trend In the last decades. Fossil fuels are a common type of non-renewable which include a huge portion of energy consumption. Despite of being nonrenewable, fossil fuels also negatively affect the human life by the emission of carbon dioxide. This limitation turn energy crisis eyes into renewable energy sources such as solar energy or energy produced from wind and water. As a result, one of the lately suggested alternative energy sources is fuel cell (FC). FC has several advantages over other types of energy generators such as zero pollution and higher efficiency.

However, the process of desalination is not easy to do on a large scale in underdeveloped areas due to the cost of the energy input, as well as taking into account the environmental issues alongside it. Desalination is a difficult process to do inland, partly for accessing the water, which would have to be obtained from aquifers (Elsaid et al., 2012) and partly for having to dispose of the brine. Therefore, it is a process which is mainly found in coastal areas.

Desalination is the most common process in the world, and because of the low percentage of fresh water and the consumption of groundwater reservoirs in many daily human uses such as, (Drinking, washing, bathing and also for agriculture and other uses...), and the entry of water in industries by a large proportion of between 70-90% so the water is an essential component in some industrial products, and also used as a refrigerant for the machines. Therefore, salt water desalination and reuse in industries and their appropriate uses have been

Desalination 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 following steps explained by Eco Chem “Step 1. Seawater enters the desalination plant through an intake system about 300 meters offshore. Water enters at a low speed to avoid impacts on marine life. Step 2. Seawater passes through an initial screening to remove any debris. Step 3. Seawater is filtered to remove any fine particles. Step 4. Filtered seawater passes through the reverse osmosis membranes Step 5. Desalinated water is treated to meet strict Australian Water Guidelines. Step 6. Drinking water is pumped into the water distribution network. Step 7. Seawater concentrate is safely discharged to the ocean and dispersed through outlet diffusers about 300 meters offshore.” The steps of desalination are a very difficult and tedious task, which can be problematic.

The cause of deaths every year in poorer countries is attributed to the lack of clean water and at the same time, in affluent countries, the need for clean drinking water is continuously increasing (Kucera, 2014). Thus, the need for the development of new means for the production of the clean drinking water is a high priority for international organizations, governments, and agencies doing research. Sustainable water desalination using Membrane distillation can make a major contribution to meeting the demand for clean for distillation water. Membrane Distillation is a process that looks more promising in the current approaches used. However, the process raises the issues of energy efficiency. The process of water desalination involves the separation of dissolved salts and other minerals contained in the water. The sources of water may include seawater, wells, rivers and wastewater. There are some driving forces that are required to do membrane separation. These include pressure, electrical potential, and concentration in order to overcome natural osmotic pressures and to be able to force water through the membrane in an effective way. The plant using this technology requires a lot of energy. The demand for energy and the production of wastewater have made desalination plants controversial. The high energy demanded, therefore, has to be reduced in order to continue the process easily. As a result, a new technology has been devised that uses the very minimal amount of electricity and has the potential of saving huge amounts of water. The technology used in membrane distillation uses waste heat to do the evaporation of wastewater through a fine membrane.

As of late there has been a renewed interest in the use of forward osmosis as a potential method for seawater desalination. The reestablished interest for research into forward osmosis process originates from its capability to either reduce energy utilization or generate energy.

Thermal desalination is a process of cleaning water that includes removing salt and as well as other toxins. Thermal desalination is the process of heating the water solution and gathering pure water when the vapor cools and condensation occurs. It also involves the heating of blackish water and collecting the condensed vapor (distillate) to create pure water (American Membrane Technology Association, 2007).

With the increasing demand for water placing pressure on existing supplies, seawater presents an enormous source to satisfy demand. However, seawater cannot be directly consumed and therefore, desalination of seawater is necessary to make it safe for consumption [1]. The current methods involving desalination utilize mostly non-renewable energy sources such as coal and gas to provide the necessary energy for the process to take place.

The last resort to fixing the water crisis is desalination. “For agriculture, desalination is so far out of the range of cost that no one really even thinks about it. But over time, we will see more and more desalination in those places with no other options, as we see in many Middle East and Gulf state countries," (Gleick, 2015). Desalination is a process that removes salt and minerals from saline water. The most popular methods used in desalination are multi-stage flash distillation, which uses heat to evaporate water, leaving the salt behind, and which accounted for 84% of desalination in 2004; and reverse osmosis desalination, which is less energy intensive but still requires a great deal of energy to pump water through filtration membranes. Forward