What happens at a Seawater Desalination Plant | Our water world

Water

is an essential part of our lives. We need it to work, play and survive. The impacts of climate change have created a significant challenge for traditional sources of fresh

water

across the planet. Dams have decreased significantly, while the steady growth of our population has created great demand for other

water

sources, such as ground

water

. Western Australians have worked hard and addressed some of this challenge by being more

water

prudent, but we still need to ensure long-term stable consumption.

water

supplies for perth and beyond in

water

cooperation we had to start thinking differently as it turned out we had a solution just around the corner along the indian ocean this huge

water

source runs along offshore but is obviously too salty to use in most applications especially drinking

water

to solve this problem our salty

sea

water

must undergo a complex system of simple processes to make it into a drinking

water

source viable and that brings us here this is a southern

sea

water

desalination

plant

one of western australia's large scale

sea

water

desalination

plant

s located near binningham

water

cooperation is at the forefront of

desalination

and has used the process since 2006.

Collectively our

desalination

plant

s have the capacity to supply nearly half of Perth's drinking

water

, making them Pretty essential to life here in Western Australia, as you've probably guessed that these

plant

s turn salty

sea

water

into precious drinkable

water

, but how exactly does this process work in southern

sea

water

desalination

plant

there are five main stages

sea

water

inlet ultra filtration filter reverse osmosis and finally

water

treatment the journey begins 500 meters offshore with two 8 meter high inlet towers at this point the ocean is 12 meters deep the

water

from The sea flows by gravity through two 2.4 meter wide pipes to the wet well 10 meters below sea level where we first started.

In the process, the inflow is very slow, allowing fish and Marine life easily swims away from

sea

water

and then passes through filters that filter out algae and other debris from the ocean. ultrafiltration the ultrafiltration process involves pumping

sea

water

through a series of filters like these filters consist of over 7000 tiny straws with holes that are 700 times smaller than a human hair so small they can actually reject viruses and bacteria now for the super high technical section reverse osmosis or ro this part of the process requires extremely high pressure previously we were at about three bar we need to increase the pressure up to 57 bar how much is 57 bar well would it push a column of

water

over 570 meters vertically in the air together with high pressure pumps we use regenerated pressure energy from the shafting process to help generate the 57 bar everything

happens

within this energy recovery devices that work by capturing the hydraulic energy of the high pressure to reach the extreme and transfer this energy inside the rotor

sea

water

leaves the device under high pressure and the fl echa rejects at low pressure if you're one of the few viewers who got all of that congratulations to the rest of us it just means we recover and reuse most of the energy in a very clever way it's this device alone that makes the

desalination

a viable option now that the pressure is high enough that the

water

can go through the reverse osmosis racks there are 16 ro racks in the

plant

, each with 244 vessels containing seven membranes each membrane is approximately 440 ft square and consists of spirally rolled layers so it's a bit like a very compact lasagna this gives us the capacity to output about 305 million liters of

water

every day or about 122 Olympic sized swimming pools once the

water

has gone through the process of reverse osmosis we find a rather unusual In any circumstance, the

water

that flows through here is almost 100 h2o pur a, so pure that it is not fit to drink.

Similar to the way we treat traditional

water

sources, such as ground

water

, we need to treat the

water

with minerals and disinfect it to stabilize it and make it safe. For drinking, as with all aspects of the

desalination

process,

water

is carefully monitored and treatment levels are adjusted to ensure consistent

water

quality,

water

quality monitoring and movement is handled by our specialized

plant

controllers, you can tell they are doing a very important job based on the number of screens in front of them, now the

water

is clean, clear and ready to drink, but how does it get to our taps?

This is the main pipeline where potable

water

leaves the

plant

and goes directly to the integrated

water

supply or dam storage for future use through the connected

water

corporation systems and to help ensure

water

for all the desalinated

sea

water

goes as far as kalgoorlie these disposal plans require a large amount of resources such as energy and we are committed to working with government industry and the community to develop innovative ways to further minimize our footprint to make our

desalination

plant

s more sustainable we partner with energy providers to help offset our energy use these partnerships resulted in the construction of large scale wind and solar farms in western australia we also continue to adopt new technologies and efficiencies throughout the

plant

, such as recovery devices energy, but we have gone beyond Renewable energy sources and energy recovery devices to minimize our impact.

We have really thought of the finer details. Most of the plan was built on a disused limestone quarry. we can operate in harmony with our environment we have regular visitors like kangaroos os bandicoots and a variety of birds including black cockatoos and blue fairy showers and the possum corridor allows our little furry neighbors safe passage through the area we also have panels solar powering our administration building, but my favorite touch is browsing the site under Pedal-powered pure green