Although terrestrial water resources are tremendous, practically all water is subjected to anthropogenic and technogenic actions. The sanitary conditions of rivers and lakes are often very poor due to contaminations of organic and inorganic impurities. Ocean and seawaters are unsuitable for practical use due to high salinity. Thus, the problem of water purification is very urgent problem.This project is aimed to development and practical use of the new method seawater treatment for obtaining the water suitable for irrigation needs. There are various methods for pure water production from seawater based on desalination, such as evaporation, reverse osmosis, ultra-filtration, ion-exchange, and electrodialysis. However, these methods present severe difficulties because of great energy consumption and low productivity. Specialists of EcoAtom Company have improved the electrodialysis method, and developed the new design of electrodialyzers. This technology is unique in their efficiency and depth of purification. Based the prototype of this plant we intend to design and create the special plant for producing of pure drinking and irrigation water from seawater. We have evaluated the economical efficiency of our method in comparison with other much advanced method of reversal osmosis. The results for salinity of 50 g/l are presented in Table.
|
Desalination Methods |
Reversal Osmosis |
Proposed Method |
|
Productivity (for Pure Water) |
5,500 m3 /day |
5,500 m3 /day |
|
Cost of the Plant |
$5.5 Million |
$4.5 Million |
|
Power Consumption |
3,000 kW |
1,000 kW |
|
Required Area |
2,900 m2 |
1,000 m2 |
|
Personnel |
8 /day |
8 /day |
|
Expenses for 1 m3 |
$0.45 |
$0.20 |
The main parts of the equipment will include filters, electromagnetic pumps, electrodialyzers, tanks, ion-exchangers, and power source. The station can be installed on the mobile track.