Desalination Ships in 2014 - Essay Example

Outline for the Big Idea – Desalination Ships The concept of desalination ships can change the water crisis in the future. Demand for water has increased while the natural resources are getting depleted. Alternatives for water conservation are sought Water desalination is an innovative cost-effective solution for the water crisis. Compared to land-based plants, desalination ships are cheaper, sustainable and less complicated. Process of desalination on ships is simple yet efficient Byproduct discharge is less harmful Energy-efficient, pollution-free and environment-friendly process Big Idea 2014 Innovative ideas and developments can probably change the world for better. Some of the big ideas can even bring changes or solutions to the existing conflicts. Here we shall come up with a big idea that would change the world or solve a conflict. The hot topic of today includes the scarcity of natural resources, particularly freshwater, which is at stake in the current scenario. If failed to conserve water or find solutions for the existing water shortage, it would probably bring severe water crisis in future. One of the big ideas that can bring change to this universal problem of water scarcity is water desalination. The idea of turning salt water into fresh drinking water through huge container vessels can bring possible solution to the water shortage problem. Here we shall discuss in detail about this big idea of water desalination through huge vessels. Even though water covers a majority of the landscape in the world, 97% of it is in the form of oceans and only 3% is available as freshwater. Most of the freshwater source is locked as ice caps and glaciers, leaving only 1% of water easily accessible to human use. Currently, it is observed that 80% of people are without access to adequate drinking water, prominently in the regions of sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Asia and Southern Asia. It is estimated that by 2025, around 35% of the world population would be affected by water scarcity, covering over 50 countries. (“Freshwater”). In order to alleviate these effects, planetary water supplies has to be conserved and furthermore, existing technologies should be implemented to avert the global water crisis. Water desalination is a modern technique that transforms the saline sea water into drinking freshwater, providing a sustainable solution to the existing water scarcity. In the modern days, desalination is carried out in ships, submarines, and land-based plants majorly in countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emeritus, USA, China, Israel and Australia. Water desalination is a process of removing salt and other minerals from saline water through one or more techniques, developing a cost-effective way to provide freshwater for human use. Some of the modern techniques implemented in desalination process are electro-dialysis, thermal desalination, multistage flash distillation, reverse osmosis, forward osmosis and more. However, the expense of the treatment and difficulty of the process varies with the saline level measured in the water. According to the US Geological Survey, “1,000 ppm – 3,000 ppm is low salinity, 3,000 ppm – 10,000 ppm is moderate salinity, and 10,000 ppm – 35,000 ppm is high salinity.” (Aintablian). Normally, typical ocean water is estimated to have an average of 35,000 ppm, which is indeed a high salinity, making the desalination process to be expensive. Building and managing desalination plants can be a cumbersome, cost-consuming process, in terms of money, energy and resources. It is estimated that “the average cost to turn one acre-foot -- about 325,000 gallons -- of salt water into fresh water ranges from $800 to $1,400 and requires a significant amount of energy.” (Dove). Moreover, desalination plants at the shore cost a heavy infrastructure for transportation of water from the sea the plant, making the process more complicated. To tackle this problem, desalination ships can be an alternative solution for an effective, cheaper and quick method of clean water. The concept of desalination ships is quite a simple yet effective one. With the ship anchored over the ocean water, a long pipeline is submerged deep down to collect seawater for the process of distillation. The evaporated water is then condensed on various platforms and filtered through numerous membranes, and finally accumulated into a tank. The residual salt and impurities are dispersed back into the ocean while the purified water is brought back to the shore. The idea of desalination ship is less harmful to the environment comparing with the land-based desalination plants. Furthermore, it leaves less impact on the sea water, groundwater resources and aquifers. Apart from preserving the depletion of groundwater, these desalination ships cause less harm to the surrounding ecosystem and the organisms. There is less possibilities for marine organisms to get caught up in the stream of seawater as the ship’s water-intake process takes place at low velocity. “A major positive discovery with using desalinization ships versus land-based facilities is that the ships use a smaller pipeline that goes deep into the ocean where there is no sunlight and potentially few organisms to upset and so disturb the food chain.” (Northam). The byproduct obtained from the desalination process is harmful one. In case of land-based desalination, after the purification process, the leftover hot salt and extra salty brine is deposited on the land or dumped into the shores. This disturbs the natural pH balance, causing repercussions in business and environment sectors. However, these impacts are widely mitigates with the desalination ships, as the entire process takes place on deep sea waters, causing less harm to the land and its resources. The leftover salt can be easily dispersed over a wider area, mitigating the effects of being supersaturated at one particular region. “When reinjecting the leftover concentrate into the ocean, a vessel can dilute that concentrate at less cost and using fewer resources, because the ship is sitting in the middle of an inexhaustible supply of diluting water.” (Adee). It can be estimated that one desalination ship can generate as much as 50 gallons of drinking water in a day, which is sufficient for meeting the needs of thousands of people. Desalination process through ships is a pollution free process with seemingly less leakage possibilities, and even if it does, there is no virtual pollution or danger to the environment as in the case of risky oil-spills or chemical disasters. Its construction, maintenance and mobilization are significantly an advantage, causing lesser or no pollution to the environment. Even the wastewater can be managed with a cost-effective, unpolluted system that discharges the brine and other chemicals safely. “Effluents from the chemical system and the dual media filter are collected in a separate sewer system, blended with the RO brine, neutralized and discharged via the brine outlet to the seawater.” (Rodav, Klose and Jayakumar). Because of the high dilution potential of the sea water, impacts to the environment are not likely. In regions with severe water scarcity, the proposed desalination vessels can be very effective as it is more energy efficient and environment-friendly when compared with the traditional shore-based plants. Furthermore, the mobility of these desalination vessels is an added advantage as it can benefit in various ways for serving the needs of different regions easily. Also, in times of natural disaster, it can respond quickly and effectively, providing access to safe drinking water. As the ships favor undisturbed ecosystem, reuse and conservation of resources, it has the capacity to produce inexhaustible supply of drinking water from the whole ocean at hand. However, efficient usage of power and infrastructure is necessary to produce a sustainable supply of water, by taking into consideration the environmental impacts and depletion of resources. Innovative ideas about sustainable use of technology and resources have led to the concept of desalination ships. Owing to its varied advantages and lesser environmental impacts, the technology has gained momentum in the modern world, and is sure to bring a prominent change to the issue of water scarcity. If the technology continues to prosper, it would possibly generate sustainable water resource for more and more countries. This concept of mobile floating desalination vessel serves as an economic alternative for areas where free shorelines are scarce, and construction of a desalination plant are not possible or expensive. Moreover, the possibilities with the desalination ships are broader, including capacity of biofuel use for the plants, enormous water production, easy discharge of wastes, mobility of ships and easy, efficient transportation. Works Cited Adee, Sally. “Water Ship Up: Firm Gets $250 Million to Make Oceangoing Desalination Vessels.” IEEE Spectrum, 1 Mar 2008. Web. 10 Apr 2014. Aintablian, Xanthe Webb. “Water Desalination.” About.com, 8 Nov 2013. Web. 10 Apr 2014. Dove, Laurie. L. “How Desalination Works.” Howstuffworks.com, 30 June 2010. Web. 10 April 2014. “Freshwater: Whats at Stake, What were Missing, What were Losing, What its Worth.” WWF Global, Web. 10 Apr 2014. Northam, Joni. “Open-Ocean or Land-Based Desalination: Responses to Water Scarcity that Reduce Environmental Impacts.” The University of Arizona, Spring 2011. Web. 10 Apr 2014. Rodav, Shlomo., Reinhard. B Klose and Sreedharan Jayakumar. “Desalination Ships.” Red-Med Marine Desalination Consortium, n. d. Web. 10 Apr 2014. Read More