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Desalination and it's impact
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ocean water-There is about 35g of salt per liter of ocean water, but the salinity of the water varies from place to place and depending on the depth of the water.
lake water- What do we mean by "saline water?" Water that is saline contains significant amounts (referred to as "concentrations") of dissolved salts. In this case, the concentration is the amount (by weight) of salt in water, as expressed in "parts per million" (ppm). If water has a concentration of 10,000 ppm of dissolved salts, than one percent of the weight of the water comes from dissolved salts.
Here are our parameters for saline water:
Fresh water - Less than 1,000 ppm
Slightly saline water - From 1,000 ppm to 3,000 ppm
Moderately saline water - From 3,000 ppm to 10,000 ppm
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There is increasing regional scarcity, though.
So why don't we desalinate more to alleviate shortages and growing water conflicts?
The problem is that the desalination of water requires a lot of energy. Salt dissolves very easily in water, forming strong chemical bonds, and those bonds are difficult to break. Energy and the technology to desalinate water are both expensive, and this means that desalinating water can be pretty costly.
It's hard to put an exact dollar figure on desalination—this number varies wildly from place to place, based on labor and energy costs, land prices, financial agreements, and even the salt content of the water. It can cost from just under $1 to well over $2 to produce one cubic meter (264 gallons) of desalted water from the ocean. That's about as much as two people in the U.S. typically go through in a day at home.
But switch the source to a river or an aquifer, and the cost of a cubic meter of water can plummet to 10 to 20 cents, and farmers often pay far
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As such, this cost figure is expected to continue to rise, which is why California is now seriously considering desalination and why the city of Tampa, Fla., decided to build the biggest desalination plant in the U.S.
The International Desalination Association says that as of 2007 there were about 13,000 desalination plants operating around the world. They pumped out approximately 14.7 billion gallons (55.6 billion liters) of drinkable freshwater a day. A lot of these plants are in countries like Saudi Arabia, where energy from oil is cheap but water is scarce.
So how is energy used to separate salt from water?
There are two basic methods for breaking the bonds in saltwater: thermal distillation and membrane separation. Thermal distillation involves heat: Boiling water turns it into vapor—leaving the salt behind—that is collected and condensed back into water by cooling it down.
The most common type of membrane separation is called reverse osmosis. Seawater is forced through a semipermeable membrane that separates salt from water. Because the technology typically requires less energy than thermal distillation, most new plants, like Tampa's, now use reverse osmosis.
SEE
J. F. Ortega , J. A. de Juan and J. M. Tarjuelo (2004). Evaluation of the water cost effect on water resource management. Agricultural Water Management, Vol. 66 Issue 2, pages 125-144.
Salt is made up of sodium and chlorine and it is a natural occurrence on our planet, it can be found and harvested mainly from the seas, oceans or salt lakes. However salt can also be mined from within the earth from dried up underground seas, normally it’s only used as road salt (maldonsalt). The product salt has multiple functions, Salt is used to preserve foods and also to flavor foods, salt can also be used as a stabilizer in water and rock salt is used to melt ice during the winter (Freeman, 2007).
Mercer, Dave. "Desal Or Not To Desal? The Desalination Debate In Australia." Geodate 21.2 (2008): 5-7. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.
Around 2.6% of the Earth’s crust comprises of sodium chloride. Earth’s oceans naturally produce salts from the earth’s crust. Underwater volcanic rock formations shift and erode causing salts and minerals from the sediment to dissolve into the oceans. This process gives water a “salty” taste. Drinking water from the oceans causes health problems such as dehydration and hypertension. Ocean water contains bacteria and harmful minerals, rendering it unsafe to drink. Humans use salt to soften water, which makes it safe for con...
A terminal lake is a lake that has water come into it but no water coming out. When the water is evaporated it leaves all the salt behind therefore the lake just keeps on getting saltier when the water evaporates.
Renee Cho of state of the planet Blog, a blogs from the Earth Institute says in the opening of his article entitled From Wastewater to Drinking Water, that “Across the globe, 2 out of 10 people do not have access to safe drinking water.” To bring it closer to home, right here, in the U.S, many states and cities are suffering from water shortages and droughts. Robert Glennon in his book Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It reports “Americans use 24 gallons of water each day to flush their toilets—approximately 5.8 billion gallons.” Most of this wastewater will not be reused for drinking but instead cleaned to EPA standards of Drinking and then used for other reasons. Cho reports that most of the wastewater is released into rivers and lakes, and some is reused and recycled for” irrigation, landscaping, industry and toilet flushing.” While it may be good to replenish sensitive ecosystems that sustain wildlife, fish and plants who are left vulnerable after water is diverted for the needs of urban and rural communities. It is also important to limit the amount we take from these sources in the first...
The average human can not live any longer than three days without water. Many of the world’s fresh water sources are running dry or are being contaminated, particularly in developing nations, leaving many without safe water to drink. Only two and a half percent of the Earth’s water is freshwater, and less than one percent is accessible by humans (not tied up in ice caps). This one percent of the Earth’s water supply is expected to sustain a population of over 7 billion people, each needing 2.6 liters a day to remain fully healthy, plus all of the water required for agriculture and industry. These scenarios will only become more and more prevalent as time moves on and we consume more water. The United Nations has classified our planet as being in the midst of a global “water crisis.” Global water supply and shortages are becoming an incredibly real and serious issue, and planning for the future is key to preventing population decline due to a lack of safe drinking water. Shortages of drinking water lead to wars and serious international conflict for basic human survival needs. One of the most popularly and commonly proposed solutions to this problem is to create seawater desalination plants to remove salt from ocean water to make it safe to drink. These water desalination plants, however, are not a viable option to carry us in to the future due to their potentially harmful impacts and expenses.
There is a global shortage of drinking water. A person might wonder how this can be if seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water. Most of the Earth’s water is unsuitable for human consuption. Ocean water is salt water, which makes up 97.5% of all water on the planet. Freshwater is only 3.5% of all the water on Earth. Drinking water is sourced from bodies of freshwater.
Each type of crystal has its own properties and shapes. Crystals are an organized arrangement of atoms and molecules. The atoms sodium (Na) and chlorine (Cl) make up salt crystals and have a cubic shape. A salt solution will contain sodium and chlorine atoms that are separated by water molecules. Crystals are formed when the water evaporates from the solution and the sodium and chlorine atoms start bonding together (Crystallization). According to the background of all-science-fair-projects “Placing a porous material like a sponge, charcoal or broken ceramic in the salt solution helps to draw in the mixture through capillary action”(Science). Crystals are left behind from the porous material’s water evaporating from the surface of it. Evaporation of water is what drives the crystallization process. According to all-science-fair-projects “Placing the solution in a dry place or under a slight breeze will help the crystals to grow faster” 0(Science).
Ocean water is often referred to as salt water. Ocean water becomes salty as water flows in rivers, it picks up small amount of mineral salts form rocks and soil of the riverbeds. This very-slightly salty water flows into the oceans. The water in the oceans only leaves by evaporating, but the salt remains dissolved in the ocean, it does not evaporate. So the remaining water gets saltier and saltier as time goes on.
People don’t appreciated the many advantages that comes with having clean potable water to use, taking it for granted. A lot of clean useful water is wasted by humans all the time that people don’t care about saving water because they have easy access to it. Clean and safe drinkable water resources are getting scarce as the population grows. The world is facing many problems, but the most important needed to survive, is water. Water is getting low in many countries, therefore habitants are suffering the misfortune of not having the reliable source of clean water. Today many countries are having water shortages; meaning rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater are not enough to rely on for supplying water demands. For example, California is facing a drastic water shortage, the natural water resources are not enough to fulfill their water demands. Water shortage affects the agricultural sector, so as a consequence the price for production
"Desalination: Drink a cup of seawater? - US Geological Survey." Water Resources of the United States: U.S. Geological Survey. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2014. .
PROPER IRRIGATIION CAN PREVENT SALT FROM BUILDING UP BECAUSE THE WATER CAN DRAIN THE SALTS AND SPREAD IT OUT SO THAT THE SALTS AREN’T CONCENTRATED IN ONE AREA!!!
No matter how advanced our technology is, we are still not capable of generating water. We must utilize the existing water supply more efficiently in order to be sustainable. Many states in the United States believe that they are sustainable. However, polluted water habitats, drained aquifers and rivers, floods, and the salt intrusion show the exact opposite of what we believe.
Water is an irreplaceable natural resource on this earth which comprises marine, estuarine, fresh water (river and lakes), ground water across coastal and inland areas. Even though there is huge water resource in this world, about 97% of water is salt water (marine) only 3% is fresh water. And in this small fraction of fresh water a major part is in the form of ice in polar region. So just 0.003% is in the form of ground water and surface water which we can use.