Before finding the
answer to the question that whether really desalination is the solution let us
first know how much amount of water exist on the earth and how much is fit for
drinking, what is the process for making the sea water fit for drinking and is
there any drawbacks of making sea water desalinate and also the amount of
energy required for making sea water desalinate.
Fresh water really
makes a small fraction of all water available on the planet while 70% of the
world is covered with water, only 2.5% of it is fresh drinkable and the rest is
oceanic salty water. Out of the 2.5% of water 1% is trapped in glacier and snowfields
actual available water is 0.007% to feed the 6.8 bllion people.
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| credit-engadget |
Population is
growing day by day but the drinkable water available only is limited and is not
expanding, so there has to be some solution for the production of fresh water
that can feed increasing population, one of the solution is Desalination.
What is Desalination
Desalination refers
to the process of removing salt and other minerals from the water, specifically
sea water. The desalined water could be used for many purposes such as
drinking, irrigation, plantation and others.
There are mainly two
types of desalination thermal desalination, and reverse osmosis.
Thermal desalination
Thermal Desalination
includes the boiling the water and collecting the water vapors to form a
drinkable water, this is off course a natural process that we see daily in our
life in the form of rain, but here is a challenge converting ocean water into
vapors would require huge amount of energy, even if it is for some million
peoples would require huge amount of energy, whereas countries are already
having energy crisis could not afford it.
Reverse Osmosis
Reverse osmosis is
the process in which salined water is pressurized against the membrane which
stuck to its place and don’t allow the minerals to pass through it thus what we
get on the other side of the membrane is desalined water. The by-product consisting
the minerals is called Brine.
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| credit-Lenntech |
What is Brine
Brine refers to the
by product that we get from the desalinated water, it usually contains salt and
other sea water minerals so basically after removing the fresh water from the
sea water brine is what we get which is actually nothing but a chemical, which
is again disposed in the sea affecting the marine, so if we assume the
continuation of desalination then we end up at adding more and more chemical to
the sea and ocean which again impact the marine life. According to the recent
publication in ELSEVIER "The state of desalination and brine
production" for every 1 liter of desalinated water 1.5 liter of brine is
produced. So basically we are producing the soft water but more than that we
are producing chemicals impacting the environment.
Conclusion
So as a conclusion
desalination could be a possible solution to solve the fresh water scarcity,
but it includes the byproduct generation
that are not ecofriendly and marine life will be affected if dumped in the sea,
in addition to this desalination includes the requirement of huge amount of
energy and money investment which could be not economical operation for most of
the country
share your thoughts what you think about desalination is it good or bad ?
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