g an

The Diverse Forms Of Seawater Technologies

By Lelia Hall


For the survival of humans, animals industries and agricultural sector, fresh water has always been a vital commodity. With the increase in each of the above factors makes an increase in its supply in the future important. As it is becoming a scarce commodity. There are various seawater technologies that have come up which aided significantly in achieving the objective.

Marine water comprises a whole 97% of the aqua storage on earth. This is followed by the glaciers which make up only 2% of the summation. Surprisingly only 0.5% is the one available for humanity use. This is sourced from inland aqua bodies. Sea aqua being not suitable for domestic and industrial human use has made desalination quite a vital means of providing another source of fresh water.

This process entails separation of sea water to two streams. Fresh one with very small concentration of salts dissolved and one with highly concentrated brime. Various forms of energy are required for the success and thereby emergence of different innovations. Different technologies based on different means of achieving this. But not all have a potential future. The MSF, RO and MED have been prophesied to be the dominant means although currently MSF and RO are the widely used.

Multiple stage flash distillation. One of the methods of desalination. It is built on flash evaporation principle. Where evaporation is induced by reduction of pressure instead of increasing of temperature. Its economic advantage is through the regenerative heating. Where the resource gives up its heat to its counterpart on every flash chamber it goes through.

Another method based on distillation is multiple effect distillation. Considered to thermodynamically efficient. It involves the sea water being undertaken through effects, these are a chain of evaporators. The effects use the law of reduction of pressure. Its economic efficiency is determined by the number of effects. This technology has been recently applied in the Arabian region but in comparison to its counterpart MSF it is still not very utilized although it is rising steadily.

Another form of distillation is the vapor compression. Where compression of vapor is the means of heating the incoming aqua. This is made possible by application of two methods. Use of mechanical compressor hand in hand with steam jet. It is built in the principle that boiling point is reduced with reduction of pressure. In small scale units of desalination this method is highly used.

RO, also known as reverse osmosis, is highly used. Where osmotic pressure is overcome through application of outer pressure which is more compared with the sea water osmotic pressure. It therefore flows in reverse direction in respect to direction of the natural flow. Dissolved salts are left behind as it concentration increases. Previous development have come up in aiding the reduction of cost operation of RO plants. They include development of efficient membranes that also last longer and energy recover devices.

These are not the only technologies in use. But the most commonly used ways of desalination as compared to the one mentioned above. We have others such as freezing, potabilization and solar evaporation.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment