Desalination or desalinization refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water. Water is desalinated in order to be converted to fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. It is used on many ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of water is limited.
Large-scale desalination typically uses large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or groundwater. The large energy reserves of many Middle Eastern countries, along with their relative water scarcity, have led to extensive construction of desalination in this region. By mid-2007, Middle Eastern desalination accounted for close to ¾ of total world capacity.
The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It is a dual-purpose facility that uses multi-stage flash distillation and is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year or about 2500 gallons of water per second. The largest desalination plant in the United States is the one at Tampa Bay, Florida, which began desalinizing 25 million gallons (95000 m³) of water per day in December 2007. The Tampa Bay plant runs at around 12% the output of the Jebel Ali Desalination Plants. A January 17, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal states, "World-wide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association."
As of July 2004, the leading method is Multi-stage flash distillation (85% of production world-wide). The traditional process used in these operations is vacuum distillation, essentially the boiling of water at less than atmospheric pressure and thus a much lower temperature than normal. This is because the boiling of a liquid occurs when the vapor pressure equals the ambient pressure and vapor pressure increases with temperature. Thus, because of the reduced temperature, energy is saved.
In the last decade, membrane processes have grown very fast, and most new facilities use reverse osmosis technology. Membrane processes use semi-permeable membranes and pressure to separate salts from water. Membrane systems typically use less energy than thermal distillation, which has led to a reduction in overall desalination costs over the past decade. Desalination remains energy intensive, however, and future costs will continue to depend on the price of both energy and desalination technology.
The Ashkelon seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant in Israel. With a capacity of 320,000m3 per day, the plant produces around 13% of the country's domestic consumer demand – equivalent to 5–6% of Israel's total water needs.
World Water Resources offers custom built commercial reverse osmosis water treatment systems or can modify one of our standard products to meet our customer's needs when handling salt water/desalinization applications. We offer a full line of seawater desalinators designed for heavy or continuous duty service with capacities ranging from 11,000 GDP to 180,000 GDP.
STANDARD FEATURES
• Heavy duty 5 micron sediment pre filter
• Premium quality nickel-brass-bronze or sea water resistant SS pump, protected by precision engineered dampener
• High quality, glycerin-filled 316 SS pressure gauges
• Product & Reject flow meters
• TFC spiral wound membranes
• FRP membrane housings • 460V/3Ph/60Hz(&50Hz)
• Low & High pressure BSL switches
• Permeate TDS monitor
• PVC low pressure piping
• Stainless steel high pressure piping
• Stainless steel throttling valve for reject stream
• Automatic feed shut off valve
• Energy recovery on models 45,000GPD and larger
• Epoxy coated steel frame
• Microprocessor/PLC based control panel
Please feel free to contact us with your specific needs for commercial and industrial applications. info@WorldWaterResources.com