{"id":11010,"date":"2023-04-20T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/?p=11010"},"modified":"2026-10-21T18:26:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T18:26:55","slug":"seawater-desalination-great-potential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/news\/seawater-desalination-great-potential\/","title":{"rendered":"Seawater desalination and its great potential"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Desalination, the process of removing salt and other substances from saline water to produce drinking water, has become vitally important as a response to the global water crisis. With water scarcity expected to affect more than half of the world&#8217;s population by 2050, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/news\/efficient-seawater-desalination-future-water-needs\/\">efficient seawater desalination<\/a><\/strong> has become an essential tool for communities that already suffer, or are at risk of, water scarcity.<\/p>\n<p>Rapid population growth and intensive urban development have brought these problems to the fore:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>climate change and droughts<\/li>\n<li>poor water management practices<\/li>\n<li>contamination and pollution<\/li>\n<li>conflicts over water resources<\/li>\n<li>a lack of technology and infrastructure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the same time, the desalination sector is committed to reducing the energy and water its processes consume, and to lowering its carbon footprint. Let us look at the basics of desalination, how the process can be decarbonised and how its other environmental effects can be minimised.<\/p>\n<h2>Desalination basics<\/h2>\n<p>There are two main desalination processes: thermal and membrane. Thermal desalination boils saline water to produce steam, which is then condensed to obtain fresh water. This method is energy-intensive, has a greater environmental impact and is more expensive than membrane desalination.<\/p>\n<p>Reverse osmosis membrane desalination is more energy-efficient and has become the preferred process for new desalination plants.<\/p>\n<h2>Decarbonising desalination: a sustainable approach<\/h2>\n<p>One of the main challenges for <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/news\/efficient-seawater-desalination-future-water-needs\/\">efficient seawater desalination<\/a><\/strong> is reducing its significant carbon footprint. The energy needed to run desalination plants has historically come from fossil fuels, which called for change not only in how these projects are powered but also in how their processes are designed. To reduce this dependence on traditional energy sources and high energy consumption, researchers and engineers have developed new methods and technologies to decarbonise desalination and recover energy.<\/p>\n<p>One strategy is to power desalination plants with renewable energy such as solar and wind. This has been used successfully at several plants, notably the Al Khafji plant in Saudi Arabia and the Perth seawater desalination plant in Australia. Powering desalination with renewables can considerably reduce the associated carbon emissions.<\/p>\n<p>Improving the energy efficiency of desalination plants is another way to decarbonise the process, through more efficient membrane materials and better process control and optimisation. Improving efficiency can considerably reduce the energy needed to produce desalinated drinking water, and with it the carbon emissions.<\/p>\n<h2>Mitigating the environmental impact of desalination<\/h2>\n<p>As well as carbon emissions, desalination can have other environmental impacts. One of the main ones, and an area where plant builders and operators have developed solutions, is the proper disposal of brine, the highly concentrated saline by-product of desalination.<\/p>\n<p>To mitigate this risk, new technologies and infrastructure have been developed for brine management. The main advances have been dilution and dispersion over sufficiently large marine areas to protect marine life, and the use of brine for energy recovery within the plants&#8217; own processes. Brine can also be reused for industrial and agricultural purposes.<\/p>\n<h2>Keys to decarbonising the process<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Use renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.<\/li>\n<li>Improve the energy efficiency of pumps, membranes and energy recovery systems.<\/li>\n<li>Use energy storage such as batteries or pumped hydro storage.<\/li>\n<li>Implement <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carbon_capture_and_storage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">carbon capture and storage<\/a> (CCS).<\/li>\n<li>Develop and apply innovative technologies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Desalination in practice<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Reverse osmosis is the most widely used process for <a href=\"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/news\/efficient-seawater-desalination-future-water-needs\/\"><strong>efficient seawater desalination<\/strong><\/a>: seawater is passed through a semi-permeable membrane to remove salts and impurities.<\/li>\n<li>Desalination plants can be located on the coast or inland. The choice of site depends on access to seawater and energy, proximity to communities at risk of water scarcity or to industrial projects that use desalinated water, such as mining, and compliance with environmental regulations.<\/li>\n<li>Plants need significant amounts of energy, and renewable energy can help reduce the process&#8217;s carbon footprint.<\/li>\n<li>The cost of desalinated water varies with location, energy and the infrastructure required.<\/li>\n<li>Some communities, including those in arid regions or affected by recurrent droughts or groundwater depletion, have adopted <a href=\"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/news\/efficient-seawater-desalination-future-water-needs\/\"><strong>efficient seawater desalination<\/strong><\/a> as a reliable, primary source of water supply.<\/li>\n<li>Potential negative environmental impacts, such as the discharge of brine and chemicals and the disturbance of marine ecosystems, need to be addressed, and solutions exist.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Supplying drinking water while minimising carbon emissions<\/h2>\n<p>Two things are undeniable: we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we need water to sustain life. Less than 3% of the Earth&#8217;s water is fresh water, so using seawater sustainably can help provide abundant fresh water to communities in need.<\/p>\n<p>Reducing the carbon footprint of desalination is essential if these projects are to be environmentally sound and sustainable. Powering plants with renewables and improving energy efficiency are on operators&#8217; roadmaps. The goals are to cut the process&#8217;s carbon footprint significantly, ultimately to net zero, to achieve energy self-sufficiency, and to minimise the cost per cubic metre of product water in both economic and environmental terms.<\/p>\n<h2>For communities and industry<\/h2>\n<p>Facing high costs and inefficiencies with traditional desalination methods? KEIKEN offers <a href=\"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/compact-plants\/desalination\/\"><strong>seawater desalination solutions<\/strong><\/a> designed for high efficiency and savings, with sustainability and a lower carbon footprint as priorities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/contact\/\">Contact us<\/a> to request a quotation for the project, product or service you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Desalination has become a key tool against water scarcity. The basics of thermal and membrane desalination, how to decarbonise it and how to mitigate its environmental impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-desalination"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11827,"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010\/revisions\/11827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keikengroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}