Reducing water scarcity possible by 2050

A press release from McGill University: Water scarcity is not a problem just for the developing world. In California, legislators are currently proposing a $7.5 billion emergency water plan to their voters; and U.S. federal officials last year warned residents of Arizona and Nevada that they could face cuts in Colorado River water deliveries in 2016.

Irrigation techniques, industrial and residential habits combined with climate change lie at the root of the problem. But despite what appears to be an insurmountable problem, according to researchers from McGill and Utrecht University it is possible to turn the situation around and significantly reduce water scarcity in just over 35 years.

In a new paper published in Nature Geoscience, the researchers outline strategies in six key areas that they believe can be combined in different ways in different parts of the
world in order to effectively reduce water stress. (Water stress occurs in an area where more than 40 percent of the available water from rivers is unavailable because it is already being used – a situation that currently affects about a third of the global population, and may affect as many as half the people in the world by the end of the century if the current pattern of water use continues).

The researchers separate six key strategy areas for reducing water stress into “hard path” measures, involving building more reservoirs and increasing desalination efforts of sea water, and “soft path” measures that focus on reducing water demand rather than increasing water supply thanks to community-scale efforts and decision-making, combining efficient technology and environmental protection. The researchers believe that while there are some economic, cultural and social factors that may make certain of the “soft path” measures such as population control difficult, the “soft path” measures offer the more realistic path forward in terms of reducing water stress.

“There is no single silver bullet to deal with the problem around the world,” says Prof. Tom Gleeson, of McGill’s Department of Civil Engineering and one of the authors of the paper. “But, by looking at the problem on a global scale, we have calculated that if four of these strategies are applied at the same time we could actually stabilize the number of people in the world who are facing water stress rather than continue to allow their numbers to grow, which is what will happen if we continue with business as usual.”...

Chemists work to desalt the ocean for drinking water, one nanoliter at a time

University of Texas at Austin: By creating a small electrical field that removes salts from seawater, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Marburg in Germany have introduced a new method for the desalination of seawater that consumes less energy and is dramatically simpler than conventional techniques. The new method requires so little energy that it can run on a store-bought battery.

The process evades the problems confronting current desalination methods by eliminating the need for a membrane and by separating salt from water at a microscale.

The technique, called electrochemically mediated seawater desalination, was described last week in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The research team was led by Richard Crooks of The University of Texas at Austin and Ulrich Tallarek of the University of Marburg. It’s patent-pending and is in commercial development by startup company Okeanos Technologies.

“The availability of water for drinking and crop irrigation is one of the most basic requirements for maintaining and improving human health,” said Crooks, the Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences. “Seawater desalination is one way to address this need, but most current methods for desalinating water rely on expensive and easily contaminated membranes. The membrane-free method we’ve developed still needs to be refined and scaled up, but if we can succeed at that, then one day it might be possible to provide fresh water on a massive scale using a simple, even portable, system.”

This new method holds particular promise for the water-stressed areas in which about a third of the planet’s inhabitants live. Many of these regions have access to abundant seawater but not to the energy infrastructure or money necessary to desalt water using conventional technology. As a result, millions of deaths per year in these regions are attributed to water-related causes....

A prototype "water chip" developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with a startup company. From the UT Austin website

EU to fund Djibouti desalination plant

Terra Daily via AFP: The European Union said Wednesday it will pay for most of a combined renewable energy and water desalination plant in Djibouti, to supply some 200,000 people, a quarter of the country's population.

EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs made the announcement with visiting Djibouti Prime Minister Dileita Mohamed Dileita, agreeing to provide some 40.5 million euros of the 46-million-euro cost.

The plant will be built near the northeast African country's capital, home to three-quarters of Djibouti's people and where water supply is less than half that required.

Desalinated water could help quench a thirsty Egypt

Megan Detrie in Egypt Independent: Desalinated water could offer Egypt a secure source of potable water, as concerns over future access to water increase, experts say. Countries in arid regions facing scarce water supplies have increasingly turned to desalination, which can turn seawater into drinkable water.

In Egypt, dozens of desalination plants are already used by tourism resorts with limited access to water and the industrial sector. Despite currently making up less than one percent of Egypt's total water production, experts say desalinated water should be a vital component to Egypt's future water security.

“Water desalination is one of the important technologies we need to think about because there is an increasing water deficit, and with all that is going on in Africa, desalination could be one of the most important aspects [for water security],” said Abeer Shakweer,  an adviser for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology who has been researching water desalination.

Egypt relies mainly on water from the Nile to support its population, but experts warn that factors like growing population, economic development in Egypt and the Nile Basin countries, increased pollution and climate change are likely to drastically reduce Nile resources....

Aswan High Dam from Lake Nasser, shot by Olaf Tausch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

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

Arab experts meet to beat impending water crisis

Abdul Hannan Tago in the Arab News (Saudi Arabia): Minister of Water and Electricity Abdullah Al-Hussayen yesterday raised the alarm by saying the Arab world would witness a severe water crisis by the year 2025. Al-Hussayen, who is also chairman of the National Water Company, attributed the alarming situation to the growing consumption at the opening ceremony of 10th Water Desalination Conference in the Arab Countries (ARWADEX 2012) at the InterContinental Hotel in Riyadh.

He said most Arabs are neither conscious of the acute problem nor of the magnitude of the looming disaster. The minister inaugurated the event on behalf of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, who conveyed his greetings to the participants and guests of the Kingdom. The four-day conference will discuss the latest techniques and methods of water desalination in the region.

The minister warned of an impending environmental disaster as a result of climate change and global warming. He cited a reliable report which indicates that the major cause of climate change was the uneven distribution of rain, leading to heavy rainfall or flooding in some areas and scant or no rainfall elsewhere.

He said that as a result of the situation Arab countries will face by the end of this century a decline of up to 25 percent in precipitation due to a high rate of evaporation. Another major concern was that global warming could lead to a decline in agricultural productivity of up to 20 percent....

Satellite photo of King Khalid Military City, Saudi Arabia taken June 30th, 2002. From NASA

Australia, New Zealand in airlift to drought-hit Tuvalu

BBC: Australia and New Zealand are to airlift equipment to the Pacific nation of Tuvalu to help it deal with a severe water shortage caused by drought. Military planes from both countries will fly a large desalination unit to Tuvalu's main island of Funafuti.

New Zealand has already flown smaller units to Tuvalu but its foreign minister said more capacity was needed. Tuvalu has declared a state of emergency over the shortage, caused by the La Nina weather phenomenon.

It has not rained in the remote nation of about 11,000 people for more than six months, and there is no drinkable groundwater because rising seas have contaminated it. About half the population live on the main island of Funafuti, where water is being rationed.

"The advice is that more capacity is needed to relieve the acute water shortage and replenish stocks," New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said....

New paper examines future of seawater desalination

William Gilroy in the Notre Dame University News: A paper co-authored by William Phillip of the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Menachem Elimelech, Robert Goizueta Professor of Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Yale University, appearing in this week’s edition of the journal Science offers a critical review of the state of seawater desalination technology. Elimelech and Phillip and examine how seawater desalination technology has advanced over the past 30 years, in what ways the state-of-the-art technology can be improved, and if seawater desalination is a sustainable technological solution to global water shortages.

...The authors point out that in recent years, large-scale seawater desalination plants have been built in water-stressed countries to augment available water resources and construction of new desalination plants is expected to increase in the near future. Despite major advancements in desalination technologies, seawater desalination is still more energy intensive compared to conventional technologies for the treatment of fresh water. There are also concerns about the potential environmental impacts of large-scale seawater desalination plants.

In their Science paper, Elimelech and Phillip review the possible reductions in energy demand by state-of-the-art desalination technologies, the potential role of advanced materials and innovative technologies in improving the performance, and the sustainability of desalination as a technological solution to global water shortages. The authors believe that there are important policy implications in their Science paper.

“Seawater desalination is an energy-intensive process; desalinating seawater consumes significantly more energy than treating traditional fresh water sources,” Phillip said. “However, these traditional sources aren’t going to be able to meet the growing demand for water worldwide. Several options already exist to augment fresh water sources — including the treatment of low-quality local water sources, water recycling and reuse and water conservation — and understanding where seawater desalination fits into this portfolio of water supply options is critical. Hopefully, our paper helps provide some of the information needed to inform the decisions of policy makers, water resource planners, scientists, and engineers on the suitability of desalination as a means to meet the increasing demands for water.”....

The Port Stanvac Desalination plant in Lonsdale, Australia, shot by Vmenkov, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Arizona challenge: Finding water for the next 100 years

Shaun McKinnon in the Arizona Republic: … "The big dams are all built," said Craig Kirkwood, an Arizona State University researcher who has studied water-resource issues. "You can reallocate water. You could augment water supplies, but that would probably be very expensive. Or you could say, 'We're living in the desert,' and just accept that." Still, most water experts agree that if the region continues to grow, its cities will need to find more water - or use less of what is now available - to avoid drawing too deeply on non-renewable groundwater supplies.

…Conservation is the cheapest and most direct way to stretch water resources, but it would require fundamental changes in the way people use water. "When you talk about conservation, people think about shorter showers or maybe reclaiming effluent," Gammage said.
To make a real dent in water use, Phoenix would need to change the entire landscape - the actual landscape, Gammage said. "If you quit watering landscape at the rate we do, just drop the per capita water use in Phoenix to what they use in Tucson. That's about a 40 percent increase in water supply right there."

…But the idea gaining the most attention right now is desalinating ocean water. Officials from SRP, the CAP and the state have met with private investors and officials from Rocky Point, Mexico, about building a desalination plant on that resort city's coast. The plant, built with money from both sides of the border, would produce water for Rocky Point and export the treated water to Arizona and California.

…But the cost would be enormous, as would the energy requirements. Even if those obstacles were overcome, the plant might not produce water for decades. "It might fill a small short-term immediate need, and maybe it's part of the solution mix, but these plants are incredibly expensive," said Brad Udall, director of the University of Colorado's Western Water Assessment. "And if you build them and the drought ends, you have a very expensive plant sitting there waiting for the next drought. It's not a silver bullet."…

The downstream side of the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona, shot by Brian Thomas, released by the author under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

China's demand for desalination lags

Terra Daily: China's major desalination project in Tianjin, while seen as necessary to ease water shortages, hasn't generated the expected demand for the desalinated water since operations started there last April, The Guardian newspaper reports. The main drawback is the high cost of the water. Desalinated water costs $1.22 a cubic meter, compared with $0.75 for normal Tianjin water.

Even though cheaper water sources in China -- pumped from rivers, lakes and aquifers -- are rapidly depleting from decades of over-utilization, companies are reluctant to make the transition to desalinated water.

But experts also say that utilities are concerned that once they make the switch to desalinated water, they can no longer use traditional sources. "They don't want to give up the old resources because they know they won't get permission to use them again," said Wang Shichang, head of the desalination research center at Tianjin University, The Guardian reports. "But the delay won't last long. China is working on plans to further develop desalination because we face scarce water resources and rising demand."

The coastal port city of Tianjin, about 90 miles from Beijing, faces one of the most acute water shortages in China, with its per capita quota of water resources at 370 cubic meters, far lower than the internationally recognized warning level of 1,000 cubic meters per capita…

Railway station on Russian Street in Tianjin, 1900

Will desal be worth its salt?

Penelope Debelle has a long, interesting article in the Adelaide Advertiser (Australia). A few snips: …As rainfall goes, 2010 was a bumper year. In early December, 7.2GL poured into the Hills catchment and we now have enough water for almost a year. But good seasons depart as quickly as they come. The unresolved spectre of permanent climate change still clouds the future and the weather is violently unpredictable.

So why - courtesy of an announcement from Premier Mike Rann in August delivered as a throwaway line in a press conference about something else - are we being encouraged to undo good habits instilled over many dry years after a single season of plenty?

The answer lies 25km south of Adelaide at Lonsdale where the slumbering desalination beast is coming to life. Like a modern-day alchemist, the plant will turn salt water into fresh. Life will change forever as we look to technology instead of nature. In the next two years we will have 40 per cent more water - even if it rains less. The sprinkler-happy new rules suddenly make sense. There will be water, but we will pay dearly for it. In three years, the price will be 70 per cent higher.

On the state's biggest worksite just north of the Port Stanvac jetty, up to 1400 people a day are completing a massive engineering feat. The plant's complexity is in its size and the way it pumps water from 1.5km out in the Gulf through pipes 25m under the seabed to an underground chamber onshore where the water moves through a series of treatment cycles inside the plant.

… "The desalination plant has always been our insurance policy to protect Adelaide's water security against dry years such as 2006-2007," Paul Caica says.

'The whole idea of the desalination plant is that it's a contingency, it's an insurance policy. As night follows day, we are the country of droughts and flooding rains. While things are looking good at the moment, we know that in 10 or 15 years, those climatic dependent water supplies will again fail."...

The Port Stanvac desal plant while it was under construction, shot by Vmenkov, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Sewage flowing past Australian desal plant

Amos Aikman in the Australian: The current off Sydney's $1.9 billion desalination plant takes sewage from an outflow only 2.5km away directly past its intake about a third of the time. The environmental study used to justify the Kurnell plant's location relied in part on an assumption that because the prevailing current runs south, there would be little danger of E.coli from the sewage being sucked into its inflow, to the north.

But CSIRO scientists who monitor the current yesterday told The Australian that it sweeps north about a third of the time, and yesterday was one such day. It has been established that on some days, the amount of E.coli in intake water is more than double the guidelines for safe bathing.

The current has been flowing north for the past week. The east Australian current, which normally carries sewage from the Cronulla near-shore outfall, is currently involved in a cold-core eddy that has reversed its direction, CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin said yesterday.

…Data managed by the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water also confirms the current flows north about 30 per cent of the time. But Sydney Water's environmental project manager, Susan Trousdale, said data showed the current flowed southwards "well over 80 per cent of the time".

As reported yesterday, professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the Australian National University, Peter Collignon, has claimed poor water quality at the Kurnell plant could create a public health disaster if filtering systems were ever to fail….

Shot of e. coli by Mattosaurus

Thames Water opens first large-scale desalination plant in UK

Juliette Jowit in the Guardian (UK): The first large-scale desalination plant to turn seawater into drinking water for homes and businesses in the UK will open today in the latest sign of growing concern about water stress in the country's most populated regions.

Although the technology is more normally associated with parched places such as the Middle East and Australia, the south-east of England – where the plant is located – has less rainfall per person than Istanbul, Dallas or Sydney.

Thames Water has spent £250m building the plant and pipes, and has said that the equipment will only be turned on at times of drought, when it can supply up to 1 million people. During a protracted planning case against the opposition of former London mayor Ken Livingstone, Thames Water claimed that London and the surrounding region faced "a high risk of sever water shortages" unless the plant was allowed to go ahead.

However opponents have claimed that the plant will use too much energy and the company should be doing more to stop leaking pipes and reduce the average water use of customers by installing more water meters and better promotions….

The Beckton Gas Works, presumably near the site of the desal plan. Shot by Graham Smith, who lived nearby when the apocalyptic ending of Full Metal Jacket was filmed there. Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

New approach to water desalination could lead to small, portable units that could be sent to disaster sites or remote locations

David L. Chandler at the MIT News office: Potable water is often in high demand and short supply following a natural disaster like the Haiti earthquake or Hurricane Katrina. In both of those instances, the disaster zones were near the sea, but converting salty seawater to potable fresh water usually requires a large amount of dependable electrical power and large-scale desalination plants — neither of which were available in the disaster areas.

A new approach to desalination being developed by researchers at MIT and in Korea could lead to small, portable units that could be powered by solar cells or batteries and could deliver enough fresh water to supply the needs of a family or small village. As an added bonus, the system would also remove many contaminants, viruses and bacteria at the same time.

The new approach, called ion concentration polarization, is described in a paper by Postdoctoral Associate Sung Jae Kim and Associate Professor Jongyoon Han, both in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and colleagues in Korea. The paper was published on March 21 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

One of the leading desalination methods, called reverse osmosis, uses membranes that filter out the salt, but these require strong pumps to maintain the high pressure needed to push the water through the membrane, and are subject to fouling and blockage of the pores in the membrane by salt and contaminants. The new system separates salts and microbes from the water by electrostatically repelling them away from the ion-selective membrane in the system — so the flowing water never needs to pass through a membrane. That should eliminate the need for high pressure and the problems of fouling, the researchers say.

The system works at a microscopic scale, using fabrication methods developed for microfluidics devices — similar to the manufacture of microchips, but using materials such as silicone (synthetic rubber). Each individual device would only process minute amounts of water, but a large number of them — the researchers envision an array with 1,600 units fabricated on an 8-inch-diameter wafer — could produce about 15 liters of water per hour, enough to provide drinking water for several people. The whole unit could be self-contained and driven by gravity — salt water would be poured in at the top, and fresh water and concentrated brine collected from two outlets at the bottom….

A single unit of the new desalination device, fabricated on a layer of silicone. In the Y-shaped channel (in red), seawater enters from the right, and fresh water leaves through the lower channel at left, while concentrated brine leaves through the upper channel. The photo is by Patrick Gillooly, from the MIT website

Water plans in Cyprus attacked as ‘sheer insanity’

Patrick Dewhurst in the Cyprus Mail (Cyprus): Economic and environmental experts have slammed a government’s plan to give the cheap reservoir water to farmers and let consumers pay for the more expensive desalinated water. The experts described the plan, which they say would include year round production at summer-peak levels and allocation of cheaper reservoir water exclusively to farmers, as "sheer insanity" that could cost "hundreds of millions of euros."

Theodore Panayotou, Professor of Environmental Economics and co-author of a damming report on the plan said: "In light of our public finance problems, this policy is sheer lunacy. It pours hundreds of millions of euros, and water down the drain, and it amounts to the largest transfer of wealth since the stock exchange bubble burst."

Under the plan, he says, the surplus from the plants would also go to the farmers. He calculates that with this surplus, farmers’ needs will be exceeded by 26 million cubic metres per year, effectively subsidising unsustainable agriculture for a minority group, to the cost of the taxpayer. Agriculture’s contribution to GDP is less than three per cent compared to tourism, which accounts for just over ten per cent.

"In the past few years only 38 million tons were used by agriculture. Now with 135 million cubic meters we will soon be growing and exporting rice in addition to their very successful banana crop," he said. Desalinated water costs over twice as much to produce as treated reservoir water, (between 87 cents and €1 per cubic metre, compared to 40 cents for the latter. Panayotou’s comments come just days after the Water Development Department (WDD) predicted a possible trebling of water prices in some areas next year….

The reservoir next to the Germasogeia Dam, Cyprus, shot by Ewa Dryjanska, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Water's quick fix a long-term drain for Australia

Natasha Bita in the Australian: Rusting in sea water, the $1.2 billion Gold Coast desalination plant required repairs soon after it opened. The showpiece of a Queensland government strategy to drought-proof the state's booming southeast, the project has been plagued by so many construction flaws and unscheduled shut-downs that the government is still refusing to take possession from the contractors who built it.

A year after it was supposed to be pumping 125 megalitres of water a day into the water supply, the Tugun plant is running at two-thirds capacity. Cracking concrete and corroding components forged from substandard steel necessitated several shutdowns last year. Despite the fiasco, the Bligh government plans to press ahead with four new desalination plants for the state's southeast, driving a national trend to divert investment from dams to desalination.

Within two years, 30 per cent of the water supplied to Australia's capital cities will flow from the ocean, as water utilities in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Perth splash $9bn of taxpayers' money on new desalination plants. By 2013, desalination will be producing more than 450 gigalitres of drinking water - almost the volume of Sydney Harbour - every year.

The new technology is an insurance against drought on the driest continent on earth but it comes at a high and growing cost, economically and environmentally. The plants guzzle so much energy that detractors describe desalinated water as liquid electricity that is already adding hundreds of dollars to household water bills.

The Water Services Association of Australia, representing the bulk of Australia's urban water utilities, predicts water prices will continue to rise. "The cost of building desalination plants will be reflected in water prices across Australia," says executive director Ross Young. "Electricity prices are only going to go upwards so operational costs are probably going to climb steadily. But whatever the cost of desalination, it's certainly less than the cost of a city running out of water."…

Boree Creek water tower, New South Wales, shot by Mattinbgn, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Desal a knee-jerk reaction by Bligh

The Sunshine Coast Daily (Australia) runs a story about a characteristic incident -- short term thinkers, thwarted on one front, instantly latch onto another ill-considered scheme: Mary Valley residents have hit out at Anna Bligh’s new solution to securing the state’s water supply, claiming her threat of desalination plants is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction. The residents were yesterday still celebrating Peter Garrett’s decision to quash the Traveston Crossing Dam plan but said they were “horrified” by Ms Bligh’s latest stand.

Her “dramatic announcement” of more desalination plants without community consultation or strategic environmental impact assessment showed she hadn’t learnt a single lesson from the financial and social debacle of Traveston, according to Save The Mary River Coordinating Group president, Glenda Pickersgill.

“It’s like she’s reeled off the ropes from the Traveston blow and is making exactly the same mistakes all over again,” she said. “There are many lessons to be learnt from Traveston. It will surely go down in history as how not to embark on major infrastructure projects.

“A prudent Queensland government would have commissioned some independent assessments, not only of the impacts but also of the chances of gaining federal approval and saved Queenslanders around $1billion….

Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty, from 1935

Key Marin County hearing on desalination

Kelly Zito in the San Francisco Chronicle: The largest water agency in Marin County is set to become the first in the region to dip a drinking straw into San Francisco Bay. If the $105 million project to de-salt about 5 million gallons of bay water each day is approved this evening as expected, about 190,000 residents could begin imbibing water from the sea by 2014.

Though the system has drawn fierce criticism over potentially high costs, energy consumption and impacts on marine life, the Marin Municipal Water District's desalination gambit marks the first of many across the Bay Area and the state.

Up and down the coast, about 20 similar projects are in the works, including a joint test project by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, East Bay Municipal Utility District, Contra Costa Water District and others.

California's water districts are trying to "find a backup water supply that is sustainable, and it makes sense that they're looking out the window at the ocean and saying, 'Well, look at all that water,' " said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Control Board, the regulatory body that will ultimately decide whether to grant the Marin project key permits to pull water from the bay.

Marin's position at the forefront of the desalination wave owes in part to its small water system. The Marin agency relies heavily on seven reservoirs located in the Mount Tamalpais watershed. When those lakes are full, the district has enough water to supply customers for two years. During dry spells, however, the district has few options….

California State Route 1 in Marin County, shot by Constantine Kulikovsky, Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

Researchers achieve major breakthrough with water desalination system

Terra Daily: Concern over access to clean water is no longer just an issue for the developing world, as California faces its worst drought in recorded history. According to state's Department of Water Resources, supplies in major reservoirs and many groundwater basins are well below average. Court-ordered restrictions on water deliveries have reduced supplies from the two largest water systems, and an outdated statewide water system can't keep up with population growth.

With these critical issues looming large, researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science are working hard to help alleviate the state's water deficit with their new mini-mobile-modular (M3) "smart" water desalination and filtration system.

In designing and constructing new desalination plants, creating and testing pilot facilities is one of the most expensive and time-consuming steps. Traditionally, small yet very expensive stationary pilot plants are constructed to determine the feasibility of using available water as a source for a large-scale desalination plant. The M3 system helps cut both costs and time.

"Our M3 water desalination system provides an all-in-one mobile testing plant that can be used to test almost any water source," said Alex Bartman, a graduate student on the M3 team who helped to design the sensor networks and data acquisition computer hardware in the system. "The advantages of this type of system are that it can cut costs, and because it is mobile, only one M3 system needs to be built to test multiple sources. Also, it will give an extensive amount of information that can be used to design the larger-scale desalination plant."

The M3 demonstrated its effectiveness in a recent field study in the San Joaquin Valley in which it desalted agricultural drainage water that was nearly saturated with calcium sulfate salts, accomplishing this with just one reverse osmosis (RO) stage….

Bowling Balls Beach in Mendocino County, California, shot by Mila Zinkova, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License