Published in Elsevier, Water Policy, 2002
The process of taking the salt out of seawater, or desalination, “is as old as human civilization. Socrates taught students how to distill seawater to obtain fresh water. Sailors have been applying similar methods for over 2000 years. Solar ponds that were developed to harvest salt have let nature do the distilling for thousands of years already. The Sun’s heat was used to desalt seawater, which served as the drinking water for troops during the siege of Alexandria in the days of Julius Caesar. Last but not least, all of the annual fresh water supply for the planet comes from evaporation from the seas.
An imminent shortage of drinking water in many coastal regions and megacities is quickly emerging as one of the major natural resource issues of this century. The abundance of salt water presents an obvious opportunity for the review and assessment of the process of desalination as a possible solution to the issue of an adequate sustainable drinking water supply.
Read the full article from Op zoek in pdf.
Desal technology can help quench the world’s thirst