Can Desalination Solve The Water Crisis: 5 CRITICAL Points | Lets do water (2023)

FAQs

Can desalination solve the water crisis? ›

The water crisis will only be solved if we realize the once quixotic vision of desalination, turning seawater into freshwater. Today, roughly 18,000 desalination plants produce around 1% of the world's freshwater, with production concentrated in regions of high water scarcity such as Israel and Australia.

One rather obvious technology that has risen in prominence over the last several decades is desalination. This generally refers to removing salt from seawater, but could also apply to treatment of other types of water (such as wastewater or brackish water), to make it potable.

Desalination removes salt from saltwater and converts it to freshwater, but the process has some negative environmental impacts. Desalination plants produce waste and toxic chemicals that are harmful to wildlife and the planet.

Benefits of Seawater Desalination:

Provides people with potable water (clean & fresh drinking water). Provides water to the agricultural industry. Water quality is safe (not dangerous or hazardous to any living thing). Uses tried-and-tested technology (the method is proven and effective).

Desalination not only removes salt, it also removes harmful metals, chemicals, and bacteria that could be in your water source. It removes bacteria by physically excluding them through the use of chemical processes.

Globally, more than 300 million people now get their water from desalination plants, from the U.S. Southwest to China. The first large-scale de-sal plants were built in the 1960s, and there are now some 20,000 facilities globally that turn sea water into fresh.

The problem is that the desalination of water requires a lot of energy. Salt dissolves very easily in water, forming strong chemical bonds, and those bonds are difficult to break.

Only 0.7% of Earth's water is readily accessible as freshwater and 96.5% of it is saltwater. Through the process of desalination, scientists can turn saltwater into safe, drinking water. This process is either thermal-based (solar desalination) or membrane-based (reverse osmosis).

What are the 2 main problems with the desalination process? ›

Brine production and high-energy consumption are key downsides of desalination. Disposal of toxic brine is both costly and associated with negative environmental impacts.

Most of these experts say that desalination is the only currently available technology capable of countering such a crisis, but it undoubtedly comes with downsides. Apart from concerns for the environment and marine life, there are issues with regard to cost and efficiency – but there is hope on the horizon.

Energy costs aside, one of the biggest concerns regarding desalination in the United States is brine waste. After ocean and brackish waters are stripped of salt and minerals to produce freshwater, the resulting byproduct contains very high salinity levels.

More from CNBC Climate:

State regulators in May unanimously rejected a much larger $1.4 billion desalination plant in Huntington Beach, citing the costs of the water, potential risks to marine life and hazards associated with sea level rise and flooding.

Desalination may be key to averting global water shortage, but it will take time. Clean freshwater is critical for sustaining human life. However, 1.1 billion people lack access to it worldwide. Desalination represents an increasingly popular way of addressing this.

Better Options: Conservation, Reuse, Storage, and Trading

Finding ways to get people to use less water could reduce existing demand by 30-50 percent in many urban areas that have already begun conservation efforts. Second, recycling or reusing treated wastewater is often less expensive than desalination.

Desalination plants around the world consume more than 200 million kilowatt-hours each day. The Sydney Desalination Plant has cost around $2 billion although it hasn't produced water since 2012 because dam levels are above 70%. It takes about 2 gallons (8 liters) of seawater to make 1 gallon (4 liters) of freshwater.

You may be wondering at this point why desalination isn't more common, since it would seemingly provide an unlimited supply of potable water. The primary reason is a large energy requirement, which often makes the process expensive.

Desalination plants, which remove the salt from seawater, could help supply the fresh water needed. However, these plants are considered among the most expensive ways of creating drinking water- as they pump large volumes across membranes at high pressure, which is an extremely energy intensive process.

The Hadera seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant in Israel is the largest seawater desalination plant in the world.

Is water desalination sustainable? ›

Sustainable development requires sustainable freshwater resources. Desalination can be utilised for sustained water supply if appropriately managed by reducing the impact of desalination methods on carbon emissions and the wider environment.

Overuse, water pollution, lack of infrastructure, and changing weather patterns due to climate change are some of the drivers of water scarcity.

Increasing water storage in reservoirs.

By expanding the reservoir capacity, we can capture and store floodwater to prevent losing it to the ocean where it becomes salinated and more difficult to treat. This stored water can be used to provide water during times of drought.

Climate change is altering patterns of weather and water around the world, causing shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others. At the current consumption rate, this situation will only get worse. By 2025, two-thirds of the world's population may face water shortages.

Amazing progress has been made in making clean water accessible, with people lacking access to clean water decreasing from 1.1 billion in 2000 to 785 million in 2017. But there are still many opportunities to multiply the benefits of clean water through improved sanitation and hygiene behavior change.

Digging ponds, lakes, canals, expanding the water reservoir, and installing rain water catching ducts and filtration systems on homes are different methods of harvesting rain water. Many people in many countries keep clean containers so they can boil it and drink it, which is useful to supply water to the needy.

There's the cost of building the facility, then there are the ongoing operational costs. The Pacific Institute's research shows that seawater desalination costs nearly four times more than water importation, and five times as much as capturing and processing rainwater.

Humans cannot drink saline water, but, saline water can be made into freshwater, for which there are many uses. The process is called "desalination", and it is being used more and more around the world to provide people with needed freshwater.

Is ocean water desalination a solution or a problem? ›

While more reliable than other water sources, desalination does have its drawbacks. The facilities needed to complete the process on a large scale can be expensive to build and operate and use a lot of energy. Plus, these plants can generate waste that can be difficult to dispose of and harmful to the environment.

In survival scenarios, desalination (pulling the salt out of water) is the only way to make seawater safe enough to drink. The simplest form of desalination is basic evaporation.

Is there enough water in the oceans for all of us to drink? In other words, it would take us 260 million years to desalinate the oceans for human consumption if all the water we drank came from the sea.

Desalination is the process of getting salt out of saltwater so that it's drinkable and usable on land. There are two main techniques: You can boil the water, then catch the steam, leaving behind the salt. Or you can blast the water through filters that catch the salt but let the liquid through.

By making the membranes more uniform in density at the nanoscale, the researchers were able to increase desalination efficiency 30 to 40 percent, therefore cleaning more water with less energy and lowering the cost.

Desalination is a process that removes salt and minerals from seawater and turns it into a potable resource. It is extremely helpful in areas experiencing rising water demands due to water scarcity, droughts, growing populations and increased water consumption.

“While desalination on its own cannot solve the global water crisis, it is proving to be one of the most effective ways of taming water loss and boosting supplies with the evolution of technologies involved in water recycling reaching millions who would otherwise struggle with access to clean and affordable water,” ...

To maintain an adequate supply of fresh water, the region needs to develop technological solutions to dwindling water levels. Fortunately, a decent chunk of California is on the coast, meaning one solution to the drought is utilizing desalination technologies to turn seawater into fresh water.

There's no question that desalination is energy-intensive. And if that energy comes from dirty sources, desalination can lead to a paradoxical outcome: It can unleash greenhouse gases, worsening global warming, increasing droughts and therefore the need for more desalination.

More from CNBC Climate:

State regulators in May unanimously rejected a much larger $1.4 billion desalination plant in Huntington Beach, citing the costs of the water, potential risks to marine life and hazards associated with sea level rise and flooding.

Is desalinated water the future? ›

Most of these experts say that desalination is the only currently available technology capable of countering such a crisis, but it undoubtedly comes with downsides. Apart from concerns for the environment and marine life, there are issues with regard to cost and efficiency – but there is hope on the horizon.

And seawater desalination tends to be a drought-proof technology."

There's the cost of building the facility, then there are the ongoing operational costs. The Pacific Institute's research shows that seawater desalination costs nearly four times more than water importation, and five times as much as capturing and processing rainwater.

Sea level rise can be prevented by desalinating the additional water accumulated into oceans annually for human consumption, while the excess amount of water can be stored in dams and lakes. It is predicted that SLR can be prevented by desalination plants.

DRIED UP: In California, desalination offers only partial solution to growing drought. The American West is experiencing its driest period in human history, a megadrought that threatens health, agriculture and entire ways of life.