Desalination Plant Begins Operation in Tampa

ambisinistral writes "The Tampa Tribune reports that the first commercial desalination plant in the U.S. is set to begin operations today. By March the plant is expected to be operating at full capacity, producing 25 million gallons of fresh water a day (10% of the water currently provided to the area from well fields). There are ecological concerns about returning highly saline water from the plant back into Tampa Bay. Proponents of desalination claim the natural tide cycle will effectively flush the bay of the saline rich discharge, while opponents of the plant feel the ecology of the bay will be badly damaged. Both sides plan on strict monitoring of the situation."

Comments

Desalination since 1928

[espee]

On Curacao, an island in the Caribbean Sea, we desalinate our drinking water since 1928. We call it the 'World's Best Water' (and probably most expensive as well! my past month's waterbill was approx. US$ 120.-).
But what the brine does with our coral reef? I dunno, but ppl who are interested in finding out might get some answers from the ppl of NACRI, the Netherlands Antilles Coral Reef Initiative.

Re:It's about time

[Smidge204]

I decided, as an afterthought, to run a quick calculation based on my last comment :)

I've been told that the average person required about 2 liters of water (64-70 ounces) daily, as a healthy requirement. That's about 2kg worth.
(More if you're a large guy, and/or do a lot of strenuous activity)

Water has a latent heat of vap. of about 2300 joules per gram. So evaporating 2000 grams of water (Assuming it's already at boiling temp) would require 4.5 million joules.

A very conservative estimate of solary energy would be 90 watts per square foot.

Assuming you would want to distill at least a day's supply of water every day (10 hours), you would need about 1.5 sq. feet of collection area.

A collector the size of a peice of plywood (32 sq. foot), under these operating assumptions, could provide over 40 liters of fresh water daily!

This does not include cooling the vapor back into drinkable liquid. You could use the feedwater for that, which will help preheat the feedwater and improve output.

=Smidge=