Monday, April 30, 2012

South Korea unveils seawater desalination R&D project

Edie.net: Water professionals must radically change their attitudes to water sourcing if global water scarcity is to be tackled, according to the International Water Association (IWA).

Speaking at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea IWA executive director Paul Reiter said that water professionals across the world needed to "hasten" their uptake of new water management options in line with rapid population growth, which could see urban populations grow by at least 1m every week in the next 40 years - to reach about 2.3bn by 2050.

Mr Reiter added that future technologies and innovative approaches to providing sustainable water would also have a major role to play, with water reuse also needing to increase.

He said: "Water professionals need to change the way they think about sourcing water, and using it over and over again", adding that suppliers need to "break the orthodox approach ....to delivering water to urban communities".

This warning comes as South Korea today (April 30) releases details of a pioneering research and development project on seawater desalination.

As part of the initiative, in 2013 the Korean city Busan is set to operate the world's largest seawater reverse osmosis plant to measure unit train and membrane size as it aims to raise global standards for water treatment technologies, including seawater engineering and desalination...

A view of Busan from Busan Tower, shot by lwy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

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