What happens at a Seawater Desalination Plant | Our water world

Water

is an essential part of our life. We need it to work, play and survive. The impacts of climate change have presented major challenges to traditional fresh

water

sources on our planet, no more so than here in Western Australia Rainfall and subsequent runoff into our dams has decreased significantly, while the steady growth of our population has put enormous demands on other

water

sources such as ground

water

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

water

conscious but we still need to ensure a stable long term supply of drinking

water

supply for perth and beyond on

water

cooperation we had to start rethinking as it became apparent we had a solution ahead of us our front door that sloshed all along the indian ocean. this huge source of

water

runs right along a shore but obviously it is too salty to use for most applications especially drinking

water

to solve this problem our salty

sea

water

needs to be put through a complex system of simple procedures to turn it into a viable one Source of drinking

water

and that brings us here This is a

sea

water

desalination

plant

in the south One of the major

sea

water

desalination

plant

s in Western Australia near Binningham

Water

Cooperation is at the forefront of

desalination

using the process since 2006

Plant

s can provide almost half of Perth's drinking

water

what

makes them pretty essential to life here in Western Australia, as you've probably guessed these

plant

s convert salty

sea

water

into drinkable, precious

water

, but how exactly does this process work in southern

sea

water

desalination

Plant

there are five main stages

sea

water

inlet screening ultrafiltration reverse osmosis and finally

water

treatment The journey begins 500 meters out to sea with two 8 meter high inlet towers At this point the ocean is 12 meters deep The

sea

water

flows by gravity through two 2.4 meter wide pipes to the wet well 10 meters below sea level, where we start the fir process, the inlet flow is very slow, which allows fish and marine life to easily swim away the

sea

water

, and then passes through screens that filter out algae and other marine debris Series of filters like this pumped. The filters are made up of more than 7000 tiny straws with holes 700 times smaller than a human hair, so small that they can repel viruses and bacteria now for the super high Technical Section Reverse Osmosis or Ro This part of the process requires extremely high Print.

We used to be around three bars. We have to get the pressure up to 57 bars. How much is 57 bars? Well it would push a column of

water

more than 570 meters vertically into the air along with high pressure pumps we use regenerated pressure energy from the arrow process to create the 57 bar it all

happens

in these energy recovery devices that capture the hydraulic energy of the high pressure , to reach an extreme and transfer this energy into the rotor. The

sea

water

exits the device at high pressure and the dart is ejected at low pressure if you're one of the few spectators that got all those congratulations for the rest of us.

It simply means that we recover and reuse most of the energy in very clever ways. This device alone makes

desalination

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

water

to flow through the reverse osmosis racks there are 16 racks in the facility, each with 244 tanks containing seven membranes, each membrane is about 440 square meters in size and consists of spirally wound layers, so it's a bit like a very compact lasagna, this gives us the capacity to process around 305 million liters of

water

per day or around 122 olympic-sized swimming pools after the

water

goes through the process of reverse osmosis we encounter a rather unusual under certain circumstances the

water

flowing through here is almost 100 h2o pure, so pure that it is not suitable for drinking.

Much like how we treat traditional

water

sources as ground

water

, we must treat and disinfect the

water

with minerals to stabilize it and make it safe for drinking, as with all aspects of the

desalination

process, the

water

is carefully monitored and treatment levels adjusted to ensure consistent

water

quality guarantee.

Water

quality monitoring and movement is performed by our specialized facility controllers. You can see they are doing a very important job Based on the number of strainers they have in front of them the

water

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

This is the main line where the potable

water

leaves the facility and flows directly into both the integrated

water

supply or into dam storage for future use by the

water

company's connected systems and to support the

water

supply for all desalinated

sea

water

reaching to kalgoorlie which will require alienation plans a lot of resources like energy and we are committed to working with industrial government and the community to develop innovative ways to further minimize our environmental footprint to make our

desalination

plant

s more sustainable we have worked with energy suppliers to offset our energy use Partnerships led to the construction of large wind and solar farms in Western Australia.

We continue to embrace new technologies and efficiencies throughout the facility, such as: B. the energy recovery devices, but we went further Renewable energy sources and energy recovery devices to minimize our impact We also thought about the finer details. Built on top of a disused limestone quarry most of the plan is able to work in harmony with our environment, we have regular visitors such as kangaroo os bandicoots and a range of bird species including black cockatoo and blue fairy rain and the dedicated possum corridor allows our little furry ones Neighbors a Safe Passage Through the Area All-green, pedal-powered