water is essential to life and we depend on it,yet many people take water for granted. As the demand for water, there is growing concern that our water supplies will not prove adequate. In areas near the coast,an obvious solution to this problem is to find ways of utilising the abundant supply of water from the sea.
water covers 70% of the surface of the earth, but 98% of this is undrinkable salt water. However,for centuries man has experimented with different methods of converting salt water into fresh water in a process called desalination,whereby salt and contaminants are removed from the water. the challenge, nowadays,is to do this on a much larger scale.
one place which has used desalination for many years is the United Arab Emirates. It installed the first desalination plants in 1972,and nowadays most of the drinking water in the country is supplied by this process. new filtration systems have been developed to replace the traditional methods,which used a heating process. Another example is Saudi Arabia,whose desalination plants produce almost 25% of the world's desalinated water. one of the largest plants in the world has been constructed there, producing 300 billion litres annually.