HAOXiao-di,WANGBang-yan,CAODa-qi,et al.Global Trends of Desalination towards Large-scale Engineering Applications[J].China Water & Wastewater,2022,38(10):18-24.
Global Trends of Desalination towards Large-scale Engineering Applications
China Water & Wastewater[ISSN:1000-4062/CN:12-1073/TU]
volume:
第38卷
Number:
第10期
Page:
18-24
Column:
Date of publication:
2022-05-17
- Keywords:
- desalination; reverse osmosis (RO); distillation; costs of produced freshwater; ecological footprint; water diversion on a long distance
- Abstract:
- Lack of freshwater is a common problem faced by nearly half of the world’s population (about 3.75 billion), which would be further aggravated in the future. To resolve the problem of water shortage, the desalination of seawater on site has been more and more commonly used in coastal and even adjacently-coastal cities, and its application level is developed towards large-scale engineering projects. Some desalination plants over 1×106 m3/d have been established in the Middle East. Compared to water diversion on a long distance and effluent reuse of advanced wastewater treatment, the lowest production cost of desalination has been declined to less than 3 yuan/m3 (normally no more than 5 yuan/m3), which has gradually changed people’s traditional minds about high cost of desalination. The costs of desalination and its ecological footprints would be greatly reduced with the energy consumption reduction of RO (the mainstream technology for desalination) as well as the use of clean energy such as solar and wind energy. Moreover, the costs of desalination by distillation would also be significantly reduced due to the combination of combined power and heat (CHP) and freshwater. The costs of production and ecological footprints of desalination were summarized based on introducing large?scale desalination projects in the world, and desalination as an indispensable supplement of freshwater resources was finally prospected for large-scale engineering applications.
Last Update:
2022-05-17