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 groundwater
. 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 seawater
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 seawater
desalination
plant
one of western australia's large scale seawater
desalination
plant
s located near binningham water
cooperation is at the forefront of desalination
and has used the process since 2006.![what happens at a seawater desalination plant our water world]()
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 seawater
into precious drinkable water
, but how exactly does this process work in southern seawater
desalination
? plant
there are five main stages seawater
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.![what happens at a seawater desalination plant our water world]()
In the process, the inflow is very slow, allowing fish and Marine life easily swims away from
seawater
and then passes through filters that filter out algae and other debris from the ocean. ultrafiltration the ultrafiltration process involves pumping seawater
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 seawater
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.![what happens at a seawater desalination plant our water world]()
Similar to the way we treat traditional
water
sources, such as groundwater
, 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?![what happens at a seawater desalination plant our water world]()
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 seawater
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.![what happens at a seawater desalination plant our water world]()
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
desalination
has certainly been a game changer for the future of our water
supply and there are plans to further increase the network. it is a precious and limited resource and we must treat it accordingly by being water
prudent at all times while trusting that our water
supply needs are secured in the future we must all care for our most precious resource today to learn more about our wall of water
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