Desalination should be a priority

DRIVING home yesterday (Monday) I heard a radio presenter posing questions about the efficacy and cost of desalination of seawater.

The points made were of sufficient importance, I believe, to warrant a response.

Some of the experts being interviewed on issues pertinent to water usage, including desalination, bear closer scrutiny.

It is true the negative environmental impact of reverse osmosis (RO) including the production of brine as a by-product has been a problem in the past. A company called EFD has recently come up with a revolutionary technology that does not produce brine, but instead crystallised sea salt that can be commercially shipped and sold worldwide.

One person made the point that costs associated with desalination are uneconomical. In the past RO systems were run on electricity; today the process is powered entirely by natural gas and renewable energy which is 7.4 times less expensive than electricity and reuses 95% of the thermal energy expended.

These advanced technologies, among others, deliver when applied in countries throughout the world, solutions that can blunt the worst of the coming water calamities.

Other countries suffering from drought and water insecurity are implementing programmes focusing on affordable sewage and storm-water recycling, inventive irrigation techniques, water from air and, importantly, desalination of sea and brackish water.

IDE Technologies in January 2016 brought on stream a desalination plant which will produce some 190 million litres of water daily for the residents of California providing potable water while creating some 2500 jobs and generating about $350 million (R4.7 million) for the local economy. Why are we not talking to them?