Desalination – water for the next generation

Abstract

Even though the volume of the earth's water is vast, less than 10 million of the 1,400 million cubic metres of water on the planet is of low salinity and suitable for use after applying conventional water treatment alone. The other 97.5% of the water on our planet is to be found in the oceans, where it is officially classified as seawater. Desalination provides a means of tapping this resource, and over the last 30 years, seawater desalination technology has made great strides in many arid regions of the world, such as the Middle East and the Mediterranean, and is starting to be considered viable even in cooler regions of the world not traditionally associated with water shortage (the UK for example.) • Filtration + Separation looks at the subject of desalination, starting with an overview of the current situation; we ask some experts in the field to point out the reasons why desalination has now become such an acceptable worldwide water treatment phenomenon (Factors behind the growth in desalination - below, and pages 15 – 18.) • On page 19, we briefly examine the different technical aspects of desalination available today (Desalination – the basics.) • We then publish two case studies; the first looks at Israel, which has embarked upon a large-scale seawater desalination program, most notably the Ashkelon project – a 100 million m3/year SWRO desalination plant (Case study: assessing the need for, and costs of, seawater desalination in Israel - pages 20 and 21.) • The second looks at Pretreatment - a vital part of any desalination process – using the US, California, Carlsbad seawater desalination pilot plant as an example (Case study: Pretreatment at Carlsbad seawater desalination pilot plant – pages 22 – 25.)