Case history: Tapping the oceans. THERE are vast amounts of water on earth.
Unfortunately, over 97% of it is too salty for human consumption and only a fraction of the remainder is easily accessible in rivers, lakes or groundwater. Climate change, droughts, growing population and increasing industrial demand are straining the available supplies of fresh water. More than 1 billion people live in areas where water is scarce, according to the United Nations, and that number could increase to 1.8 billion by 2025.
Seawater could help solve Florida water woes. Yemen Funnels Sea-water to Drinking Water With the Low-tech Watercone. Collecting water from thin air is not an odd idea.
The ancient Israelites did it back in the day –– A while back, I wrote an article about the new desalination plant in operation in Ashkelon, Israel, which is currently said to be supplying enough fresh water to satisfy about 6% of the entire country’s fresh water needs. I later followed this article up with another piece dealing with an even larger desalination project in Saudi Arabia which together with other desalination plants supplies about 70% of the entire country’s needs for fresh drinking water. All of this sounds grand, except for one thing, which was politely pointed out to me by a reader. And that “small point” is the immense amount of energy needed to run the plant, and what happens to all the salt that is produced during the desalination process? Yemen is about to implement a new low tech solution. Desalination. Desalination, desalinization, and desalinisation refer to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from saline water.
More generally, desalination may also refer to the removal of salts and minerals,[1] as in soil desalination, which also happens to be a major issue for agricultural production.[2] Salt water is desalinated to produce fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. One potential byproduct of desalination is salt. Desalination is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use.