First U.S. Desalination Plant Goes Online

DrEnter writes "According to this AP article on Yahoo!, the first full-time desalination plant has gone online in the U.S. to provide fresh water for the Tampa Bay, Florida area (from Tampa Bay itself). While common in the mideast and other parts of the world, this is the first in the U.S. to be used as a regular source of fresh water (there are a couple others in the U.S. that are only for emergency use). It will also (arguably) be one of the least expensive to operate, producing 1000 gallons selling for about $2. There is some more information at Tampa Bay Water's web site."

Comments

USVIs

[mjpaci]

There's a full-time desal plant on St. Croix, USVI. I guess they meant the 50 states and not the United States and All of its territories.

--Mike

This is not the first operational US desal plant

[dacarr]

There is a small desalination plant on Santa Catalina Island, which provides a significant amount of the island's water requirements without having to have it tanked in from Long Beach. (More of it is from inland reservoirs scattered about the island.) Granted it's an RO plant, but let's get the facts right, shall we?

Read here for details provided by the California coastal commission. You'll have to page down a bit.

Re:This is not the first operational US desal plan

[dacarr]

Guess I should explain, an "RO" plant is a Reverse Osmosis facility. A little less expensive on various angles than a still plant (where they distill water rather than filter it), but I wonder if you could run still off of the heat generated at a power plant. San Onofre comes to mind there.

Uh, there are some in the US already.

[Above]

Dare County (outer banks, NC) has done desal since 1989, some links:

http://darenc.com/Water/papers/desalcmg.htm
htt p://www.membranes-amta.org/media/pdf/reliable.p df