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Desalination

Learn about desalination. This area is for learning, research, and education about desalination. Desalination technologies are a potential solution that may help to alleviate water scarcity in Africa and around the globe.

Desalination plant of sea water in Barcelona.

Information

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Reverse osmosis

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One of the most common forms of Desalination is Reverse osmosis (RO). This technology comprises imposing pressure on a high turbidity/salinity fluid in contact with a membrane. The membrane acts as a solvent to the fluid, i.e. the fluid is soluble in the membrane. After the membrane becomes saturated with fluid, the fluid then diffuses into the space on the non-saline side of the membrane. The membrane is also considered semi-permeable to hydroxide (OH-) and hydronium (H+) ions, which are water's natural state, and pass through the membrane as they would through any particle exclusion barrier. In these ways, salinity and turbidity may be filtered out of the fluid sourcewater.

Learning questions

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Would utilizing desalination on a mass scale have undesirable environmental outcomes?

I think the primary impact would be in energy consumption but if the scale were massive enough then there could be impacts on deserts or other terrain as human activities; such as farms, cities and homes; previously water limited expand. Mirwin 13:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The recently developed desalination plants and/or systems are equipped with Energy Recovery device which considerably reduce energy consumption up to 40 percent,In fact the required energy to desalinate 1 cubic meter of seawater is about 3 KW. However the impact of Reverse Osmosis brine discharge to marine environment is still irrevocable.The high saline brine water outfall, which typically discharges in the ocean have enormus undesireable negative impacts in nature and marine life that could be stopped by few simple works such as discharging in deep beach wells and/or discharging through different tiny branches instead of one big diameter pipe and etc.

Readings

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Wikipedia

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