Desalination | U.S. Geological Survey (2024)

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Thirsty? How 'bout a cool, refreshing cup of seawater?

No, don't take us literally! Humans cannot drink saline water. But, saline water can be made into freshwater, which is the purpose of this portable, inflatable solar still (it even wraps up into a tiny package). The process is called desalination, and it is being used more and more around the world to provide people with needed freshwater. Most of the United States has, or can gain access to, ample supplies of freshwater for drinking purposes. But, freshwater can be in short supply in many parts of the Nation and world. And, as the population continues to grow, shortages of freshwater will occur more often, if only in certain locations. In some areas, salt water (from the ocean, for instance) is being turned into freshwater for drinking.

The "simple" hurdle that must be overcome to turn seawater into freshwater is to remove the dissolved salt in seawater. That may seem as easy as just boiling some seawater in a pan, capturing the steam and condensing it back into water (distillation). Other methods are available but these current technological processes must be done on a large scale to be useful to large populations, and the current processes are expensive, energy-intensive, and involve large-scale facilities.

What makes water saline?

What do we mean by "saline water?" Water that is saline contains significant amounts (referred to as "concentrations") of dissolved salts. In this case, the concentration is the amount (by weight) of salt in water, as expressed in "parts per million" (ppm). If water has a concentration of 10,000 ppm of dissolved salts, then one percent of the weight of the water comes from dissolved salts.

Here are our parameters for saline water:

• Freshwater - Less than 1,000 ppm
• Slightly saline water - From 1,000 ppm to 3,000 ppm
• Moderately saline water - From 3,000 ppm to 10,000 ppm
• Highly saline water - From 10,000 ppm to 35,000 ppm

By the way, ocean water contains about 35,000 ppm of salt.

The worldwide need for freshwater

The scarcity of freshwater resources and the need for additional water supplies is already critical in many arid regions of the world and will be increasingly important in the future. Many arid areas simply do not have freshwater resources in the form of surface water such as rivers and lakes. They may have only limited underground water resources, some that are becoming more brackish as extraction of water from the aquifers continues. Solar desalination evaporation is used by nature to produce rain, which is the main source of freshwater on earth.

According to the International Desalination Association, globally, more than 300 million people receive their water from de-salination plants. The largest desalination plant in North America, the Claude "Bud" Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, can be found near San Diego, California. It creates about 10 percent of the freshwater used by the approximately 3.1 million people in the region and it costs about twice as much as other water sources. At this moment there exists 11 desalination plants in California and 10 more plants have been proposed. The largest desalination plant in the world, Sorek Desalination Plant, is locatedsouth of Tel Aviv, Israel and produces over 137 million gallons of potable water a day. In contrast, the Carlsbad plant produces approximately 50 million gallons of water a day.

In 2015, in the U.S. in some States, public supply water sources include desalinated seawater or brackish groundwater that has been treated to reduce dissolved solids. A combined total of 7.21 millions of gallons per day of saline surface water withdrawals for public supply use were reported for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts. A combined total of 263 millions of gallons per day of saline groundwater withdrawals for public-supply use were identified for Florida, California, Texas, Virginia, Kansas, and Utah. (Deiter et al., 2018).

Another method: Reverse osmosis

Another way saline water is desalinized is by the "reverse osmosis" procedure. In most simplistic terms, water, containing dissolved salt molecules, is forced through a semi-permeable membrane (essentially a filter), in which the larger salt molecules do not get through the membrane holes but the smaller water molecules do.

Reverse osmosis is an effective means to desalinate saline water, but it is more expensive than other methods. As prices come down in the future the use of reverse osmosis plants to desalinate large amounts of saline water should become more common.

Uses for desalinated water

When we think of desalination we tend to focus on having fresh water to drink but it is important to note that desalinated seawater is not only produced for domestic/municipal use. Desalination provides freshwater for agricultural irrigation and is often used for processes that require very high water quality like that used in boilers to avoid scale buildup. Other examples include the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, semi-conductors, and hard disk drives.

Desalination is not modern science

Distillation desalinationis one of mankind's earliest forms of water treatment, and it is still a popular treatment solution throughout the world today. In ancient times, many civilizations used this process on their ships to convert sea water into drinking water. Today, desalination plants are used to convert sea water to drinking water on ships and in many arid regions of the world, and to treat water in other areas that is fouled by natural and unnatural contaminants. Distillation is perhaps the one water treatment technology that most completely reduces the widest range of drinking water contaminants.

In nature, this basic process is responsible for thewater (hydrologic) cycle. The sun supplies energy that causes water to evaporate from surface sources such as lakes, oceans, and streams. The water vapor eventually comes in contact with cooler air, where it re-condenses to form dew or rain. This process can be imitated artificially and more rapidly than in nature, using alternative sources of heating and cooling.

Why don't we see more desalination plants if freshwater is so scarce?

The primary reason we don't see more desalination plants is due to the cost to operate these plants. Salt dissolves easily in water and it requires a lot of energy to break the chemical bonds. Energy consumption hikes up the cost to run a plant and the cost of the technology to desalinate the water also holds a hefty price tag.

Sometimes environmental protection is a factor that that can keep desalination plants from being built. In 2022, after a 20-year plan to build a desalination plant at Huntington Beach in California, the California Coastal Commission declined the bid to build the plant due to concerns abouthigher water rates, marine life loss, and impacts to poor households already living near industrial areas. Residents in the area did not like that the plant would have taken 100 million daily gallons of seawater, desalted half of it, and discharged the other half back as saltier brine.

Your own personal desalination plant

Remember looking at the picture at the top of this page of a floating solar still? The same process that drives that device can also be applied if you find yourself in the desert in need of a drink of water.

The low-tech approach to accomplish this is to construct a "solar still" which uses heat from the sun to run a distillation process to cause dew to form on something like plastic sheeting. The diagram to the right illustrates this. Using seawater or plant material in the body of the distiller creates humid air, which, because of the enclosure created by the plastic sheet, is warmed by the sun. The humid air condenses water droplets on the underside of the plastic sheet, and because ofsurface tension, the water drops stick to the sheet and move downward into a trough, from which it can be consumed.

Some desalination facts

• It is estimated that some 30% of the world's irrigated areas suffer from salinity problems and remediation is seen to be very costly.
• According to the International Desalination Association, in June 2015, 18,426 desalination plants operated worldwide, producing 86.8 million cubic meters per day, providing water for 300 million people. This number increased from 78.4 million cubic meters in 2013, a 10.71% increase in 2 years.
• The most important users of desalinated water are in the Middle East, (mainly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain), which uses about 70% of worldwide capacity; and in North Africa (mainly Libya and Algeria), which uses about 6% of worldwide capacity.
• Among industrialized countries, the United States is one of the most important users of desalinated water, especially in California and parts of Florida. The cost of desalination has kept desalination from being used more often.
• In 2015, in California, about 11% of total water use withdrawals were from saline surface water and saline groundwater.

To further your knowledge about desalination/desalination plants please visit the links below.

• Desalination: Limitations and Challenges(Hinkenbien, 2004)
• Safe Drinking-water from Desalination (World Health Organization)
• Desalination Facts (Texas Water Development Board)
• Desalination at a Glance (International Desalination Association)
• Estimated use of water in the United States in 2015 (USGS)

*Some of this information came from the Water Education Foundation and from the Corpus Christi TAMU-CC Public Administration.