Learn How These Tech Breakthroughs Could Replace Water Desalination
Water covers 70% of our planet and it is easy to think that it will always be plentiful. However freshwater- the stuff we drink and use for irrigation is only 3% of the world’s total water source. But when we are talking about water we should also take into consideration gaseous water or water vapor. At any given time, 12,900 cubic kilometers of water is present in the atmosphere which is three times the amount of water humans consume annually. So if we could pull water out of thin air, it might end our problems related to water scarcity.
That seems impossible to achieve. But thanks to major scientific leaps, atmospheric water generation or AWG technology soon will be in your homes. Today we will be discussing three promising AWG technologies that could be potential solutions to global water shortages. But before we begin let’s have a few words about desalination and the challenges in using it. Desalination is the process by which the dissolved mineral salts in water are removed. Currently, this process is mostly used to convert seawater into fresh water for human consumption.
Apart from artificial methods, desalination also occurs naturally when seawater gets evaporated into vapor. The vapor leaves out all minerals and salts and gets condensed into pure fresh water. The first country to use the desalination process for the mass production of water was Australia. Today there are approximately 16,000 desalination plants in an operation spread across 177 countries. Desalination is mostly carried out by the process of reverse osmosis where water is passed through a semi-permeable membrane.
The membrane allows water to pass but not the salt. Later the water is treated with chemicals for safe usage. Methods like solar distillation and nanofiltration are also getting popular these days. Therefore if we can convert seawater into freshwater, expanding the production scale of desalinators may look like the solution at first. But there’s a catch. The byproduct of desalination is called Brine.
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