Fresh Water from Sea !!!!

Pure drinking water at six paise a litre. This need not be a dream any more. The National Institute of Ocean Technology at Chennai has succeeded in putting together and operating a desalination system with a capacity of one million litres a day, which promises to make this a reality. Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Kapil Sibal, said the quality of the water produced from the plant has been found to surpass even international standards. For instance, the level of total dissolved solid, which was a major parametre, was found to be less than 10 parts per million (ppm), as against the international standard of 500 ppm.
Describing it as a global first, he said though the system was based on the well known principle of flash evaporation, putting it together was an arduous task as the plant was mounted on a floating barge 40 km into the sea off the coast of Chennai. The technology involved was turning surface sea water into vapour in a vacuum chamber and then condensing the vapour using cold water drawn from the sea itself from a depth of 600 m.

Mr. Sibal said that having developed the one million litre capacity system successfully; his Ministry would now focus on up-scaling it to at least 10 million litre capacity systems with the help of the private sector.


I feel this is one of the biggest advancement to have been made in the recent times and that it has been done in India is great news for us. If true and scalable, this represents one of those single advances that will save future generations a terse fate.

Entire Coastal states can now be given water and irrigated in one go.


Technology export opportunities are also bound to come up. Not to mention, the Cola biggies now under fire in Kerala for depleting ground water, can breathe a sigh of relief.