With population growing and fresh water resources running dry, desalination seems like the perfect solution to the world’s increasing thirst. Just take some sea water, or brackish water from an underground source, and remove the salt. What could be simpler?
In principle, the process really is that simple. The salt is removed either through evaporation or by forcing the salty water through filters. But it takes a lot of energy and, depending on how it’s produced, the end result could be more greenhouse gas emissions or nuclear waste.
If there is to be a desalination plant, it should be zero emissions in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and it shouldn’t cause environmental impacts when it’s established.
Worldwide, desalination plants have been built where energy is affordable. It’s no surprise that more than half of all seawater desalination plants are located around the Arabian Gulf, where cheap oil and water shortage come together. Nearly all the remaining plants are in countries rich enough to pay the energy bills—such as Spain and the U.S. The U.S. has the world’s second-largest desalination capacity.
Energy is not the only environmental impact of desalination. In the case of sea water plants, there’s the risk of sucking in marine organisms along with the water, and all desalination plants produce extremely salty water as waste. If this is thrown back in the sea undiluted, the salt concentration is lethal for most sea creatures.

SGN’s solar desalination solution tackles all the problems associated with desalination. SGN’s solar mirror stands three metres tall. The captured heat will be used to create steam for electricity and desalination, with any excess heat going into thermal storage. ‘Unlike conventional desalination processes, this will reduce or eliminate the need to dispose of byproduct waste brine back into the sea. ‘The technology is off-the-shelf, but the combination of the technologies in a high demand commercial environment for power, water and salt is unique.

Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water. More generally, desalination may also refer to the removal of salts and minerals, as in soil desalination.


Water is desalinated in order to be converted to fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by product. It is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of fresh water is limited.
Large-scale desalination typically uses extremely large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or groundwater. The large energy reserves of many Middle Eastern countries, along with their relative water scarcity, have led to extensive construction of desalination in this region. By mid-2007, Middle Eastern desalination accounted for close to 75% of total world capacity.
The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It is a dual-purpose facility that uses multi-stage flash distillation and is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year. 
The largest desalination plant in the United States is the one at Tampa Bay, Florida, which began desalinating 25 million gallons (US Gal.) (95000 m³) of water per day in December 2007 (that translates into 34.6 million cubic metres of water a yr). The Tampa Bay plant runs at around 12% the output of the Jebel Ali Desalination Plants. A January 17, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal states, "World-wide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association."