The Economist from March 29, 2012
http://www.economist.com/node/21551514
Photo Summary: This photo is a diagram of a typical water desalination plant. Hundreds of millions of gallons of water are drawn in each day and get transformed into claen drinking water.
Summary: Water desalination is a process in which salty ocean water is used to make clean drinking water. On the west coast this process is now being used to reduce the amount of imported water they use. One plant in California called, Poseidon Resources, is the second largest plant of its kind in America. The plant draws in about 104 million gallons of water for cleaning. At the end, the plant is able to produce 50 million gallons of pure water from the original 104 million gallons. Once the plant is fully running in 2015, it is projected to produce 10 percent of the region's pure water. This process also takes away from the amount of water that has to be taken from fresh water sources such as the Colorado River. However, there is som controversy surrounding the topic. Environmentalists argue that the new plants use way too much energy, and the process is killing marine life. They say that there is a time for desalination, but is not now.
Opinion: I believe that the plants are a great idea. Since 97 percent of earth's water is salt water, this will allow us to have much more clean drinking water. However, I do believe that the amount of water and energy they are using is unacceptable. We do not have a major shortage of water in America by any means, so there is no need for this. These plants should be put on the coasts of Africa in order to get fresh water to a place that is in great need of it.
Questions:
1) Explain some pros and cons of desalination.
2) What is your opinion on water desalination? Why?
3)Do you think this process will be relied on heavily in the future? Why or why not?
Opinion:
ReplyDeleteI also think that these plants are a great idea. However, the environmentalists are correct in saying that these plants use up an enormous amount of energy. The plants are necessary because without them the people would take millions of gallons out of their natural resources without refilling them; by using these plants, they are able to use less of the natural water that will take many years to refill, and use water from the ocean since it is much larger and has billions of gallons of water. This relates to our life now because it is happening in America and one day we may use up most of the water in our aquifers and have to turn to these plants for some or most of our water.
Question 3:
I beleive that in the future we will rely on these plants for most of our water. With the growing human population, we wil quickly use up all of our natural resources of water (our aquifers) and will probably rely heavily on getting water fom these plants.
Opinion: If the plants are only cleaning half of the water they bring in, is it really worth it to spend millions of dollars on building these plants? And if it is killing marine life, that's another negative factor in building and using them.Enough marine species are endangered if not exinct due to pollution and hunting today anyway, these plants would just add onto the problem. In the future however, we will more than likely need them. But hopefully by then builders of the plants could figure out a way to clean more water they bring in, and kill less marine life.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 3:
Yes, these plants will be relied on in the future, maybe not heavily, but they will contribute a large amount to the nations if not worlds fresh water supply. With Aqufiers being tapped out slowly one after the other, and with 97% of the planet's water salt water, these plants may be our only solution to healthy drinking water.
Opinion
ReplyDeleteI believe that desalination is a great discovery and and it will be used a lot. Since more than half of the world is covered in salt water than this will be a good chance to use desalination to conserve the freshwater and use more salt water. This reminds me of a tv called I shouldn't be alive when the person surrounded in salt water on a raft used this plastic machine thing and changed the salt water into fresh and that is how he survived.
Question 3
I think that they will relie on this process in the future because I believe that water is a limited resource and will soon run out. Desalination is a good process to make our carrying capcity bigger and help foreign countries become or cilvilized. This process will be utililzed a lot within about 10 years since I think that the freshwater will be in a small amount. This process is great and soon it will be more advanced and we will be able to use salt normally without problems for people.