Talk:Desalination

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References and External links

re03955 14:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

What is "pressure barrier osmosis"? Google finds only Wikipedia articles. This term appeared first in water resources (first version).--80.137.207.121 21:18, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I haven't been able to find anything to confirm the existance of such a thing. Failing the arrival of confirming references that I can actually see, I will probably remove the reference to "pressure barrier osmosis" next month. --Coro 21:58, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I never heard of it either. Probably a confusion with reverse osmosis. pstudier 01:19, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC) I agree - it sounds like RO to me - there is much confusion on this page. Steelaway

additional citations for verification

Encyclopedia of Desalination and Water Resources (DESWARE) http://www.desware.net/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Manic mechanic (talk • contribs) 03:36, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Freeze-thaw water desalination goes through tests in North Dakota

http://www.undeerc.org/centersofexcellence/waterfreeze.aspx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.22.46.220 (talk) 02:16, 23 October 2010 (UTC) http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=892 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.22.46.220 (talk) 02:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Reports for the Desalination and Water Purification Research Program (DWPR) are here http://www.usbr.gov/pmts/water/publications/reports.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.22.46.220 (talk) 02:23, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Energy

How much energy is needed to desalinate a cubic meter of sea-water? Someone please add this to the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.249.20.138 (talk) 19:52, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

A cubic meter? Who measures water that way? Should the answer be provided in millicalories just for fun? Jpp42 13:41, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

If SI is used, this would be good for everybody. I think cubic meter is the best way.re03955 14:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree 1m3 of water is 1Kl or 1000 litres which is the universally accepted SI unit (at STP 20 degrees Celsius - outside of the USA of course!)

A long time coming, but here's an answer as to how much energy is needed: it depends. According to the Elimelech and Phillip review paper in Science (Aug. 2011): "the theoretical minimum energy of desalination for seawater at 35,000 parts per million (ppm) salt and at a typical recovery of 50% is 1.06 kWh/m³."(p. 713) Further on it says: "Additional energy, >1 kWh/m³, is consumed by the intake, pretreatment, posttreatment, and brine discharge stages ...." Also for posttreatment of the removal of boron and chlorides. On p. 716: "Current state-of-the-art SWRO plants consume between 3 and 4 kWh/m³ and emit between 1.4 and 1.8 kg CO₂ per cubmic meter of produced water." See paper for additional details and references. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:30, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Currently, the introduction mentions that Energy consumption of sea water desalination can be as low as 3 kWh/m^3, and to backup that claim it cites an article titled "Energy Efficient Reverse Osmosis Desalination Process" by ijesd.org. This seems to be a practical limit to energy consumption. However, the link is broken and I haven't been able to find the article on the source. This claim and the reference should be removed. Negrulio (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

The article says "Supplying all domestic water by sea water desalination would increase US Domestic energy consumption by around 10%, about the amount of energy used by a domestic refrigerator[14]" Well hell, that's not much. I would have thought it would have taken a lot of domestic refrigerators. I'd edit this, but I'm not sure what the author intends to say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.50.0.25 (talk) 23:09, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Under the "Energy Consumption" section is "Note: "Electrical equivalent" of thermal energy is the electrical energy that cannot be produced in a turbine because of extraction of the heating steam". This sentence doesn't say anything sensible - it appears to be a poorly-worded attempt to say something like "'Electrical equivalent' of thermal energy is the amount of electrical current a given quantity of thermal energy could be used to generate with a turbine". I believe my interpretation to be correct given the units involved, the typical efficiency of a turbine generator of the appropriate size, and my experience as a Chemical Engineer. I will be rewording the note for clarity. I believe this is important because the unit used (watts) applies to both thermal and electrical energy, meaning in an "ideal" case 1 kWh of thermal energy would do the same amount of work as 1 kWh of electrical energy. The reason for the extra row in the table is to account for losses during conversion. Matthias Alexander Jude Shapiro (talk) 04:01, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

This section is rubbish. Watts are a RATE, while m^3 is a quantity. The proper unit is a Joule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.71.183 (talk) 18:46, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Gas Hydrates.

The interest in ethane (gas) hydrates is more to do with mining them from the sea floor for their gas and water components to be separated. While being researched for desalination it is certainly not a major process. Moreover it does not yet produce water fit for drinking. I have relegate the process to the list of possible methods... perhaps it can be expanded on its own article. CustardJack 12:03, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure what Membrane Distillation means. I suspect that it is an old-fashioned term for Membrane Processes and therefore should be removed, since they exist as separate entries under Reverse Osmosis and Nanofiltration (which I have added). However, it may mean what are generally termed "Hybrid Plants", which combine distillation, ie evaporation, with membrane processes and an electricity generating station. This alternative provides flexibility because of its two sources of energy: electricity for the membrane process and low-pressure steam from the power station for the thermal evaporation process (MSF or ME).

As membrane technologies improve it may be useful to keep this section alive.

WuLouis

Hello WuLouis,

Membrane distillation is a process using material like Gore-Tex for desalination. There have been small applications been set up and research is going on in Germany. Plus for this process is low temperature and pressure. Scaling and fouling is very low! GOR better PR has to be improved during ongoing research at the moment. See also http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membrandestillation

juliet yahyaei

Totally forgetting my lack of German, I tried to take a look at the referenced article. Needless to say, I didn't get very far. Any chance of somebody translating to an English version?--Coro 00:09, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

You could try [1]. This is Google's translation of the web page. It seems to me that this would require the same amount of heat as any conventional distillation, but at a lower temperature. Not sure what it's advantage over vacuum distillation. Hope this helps. pstudier 01:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced item?

The sentence "While SDSU Center for Advanced Water Technologies [2] and Professor Ronald A. Newcomb has worked with a local company (Aqua Genesis Ltd.) to assist in the development of geothermally powered desalination. [3]" towards the top of the page seems a) to be advertising and b) out of context where it has been placed. Geothermally powered desalination is not a major desalination technology at present. Wulouis

In looking at it, I'm having to agree. That section is supposed to be for currently established methods. I will be moving that stuff down to the experimental section.--Coro 01:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Spray method

Does anyone recall a method involving spraying the saltwater (creating a fine mist), making distillation require vastly less energy? Apparently boiling the mist saltwater was much easier than boiling it as a liquid.

I dont think this is supported in the thermodynamic literature, there is energy required to develop a fine mist.

First time thermal desalination was published

I did try to find out when thermal desalination (MSF) first was published and fond a Process scheme of a multi stage flash (MSF) evaporator published 23. – 26. May 1934 in Germany during a seminar of “Schiffstechnische Gesellschaft” by Mr. R. Blaum called “Process scheme of a 3-stage flash evaporator plant with brain recirculation” I do have a scan of the process if wanted because I do not know how to get it in here.

Claus Mertes

Postwar, R.S. (Bob) Silver, a Scottish professor of engineering (and poet and playwright), did a thermodynamic analysis that showed multi-stage flash and reverse osmosis were clearly the best processes. Reverse osmosis was at the time technologically infeasible, and I believe that Silver's MSF design was the first continuous-flow process to be commercially implemented, in Kuwait. He was given a UNESCO gold medal for this invention. Bob told me that patents were drafted but did not succeed in catching very much of the huge money that American companies subsequently made. I am not sure how Blaum fitted in; Bob is no longer with us, but his published papers on the subject might say. - AG, Stockport.

Thanks for this information. Talking about a continuous-flow process please have a look at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerwasserentsalzung. This is the continuous-flow process published in 1934 by Blaum. - Claus Mertes

Economics

I added a bunch of disclaimers to the economics section, as it is simple stated facts without references. If anyone has any real information as to the economics and costs of construction/maintenance/etc, I think it would be extremely useful.Dirtyharry2 00:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I am currently the project engineer for supply of GRP pipe to the Gold Coast Desalination project at Tugun in Queensland Australia. You have asked about construction costs and I have figures for the project of: Pretreatment and RO plant: AUD 600M Tunnel for supply and return of salt water: AUD 300M Network piping for fresh water: AUD 300M These are construction cost estimates only that have been given to contractors. 219.89.123.33 23:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)D Ashby

Carbon emissions from desalination

I suggest a paragraph or two about carbon dioxide emissions (greenhouse gas) from desalination would be appropriate in this discussion. If the energy intensity of desalination is quantified, it will then be possible to estimate greenhouse emissions for a given electricity source (e.g. coal etc). I do not know the amount of energy required for desalination, but I can quantify the emissions relative to the energy requirement. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Haimona (talk • contribs) 01:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

See Talk:Desalination#Energy (above) for figures and reference. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:33, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

There are a lot of grammatical errors in this article

There are a lot of errors with the usage of "and," in regards to run-on sentences. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jasdub32 (talk • contribs) 10:52, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

Expansion requests

This article could benefit from:

• More examples of prices of desalination and alternatives (such as tapping ground, river, or lake water) in various locations around the world. That way readers can make up their own minds about how expensive or infeasible it is.
• A list quantitatively detailing the suppy capacity on a country-by-country or plant-by-plant basis for the largest facilities in the world.

-- Beland 16:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

The World Bank report on desalination in the Middle East and Central Asia has significant useful information on desalination in general, covering the economics, environmental aspects, energy use, and institutional aspects. It could be a useful reference for any expansion of the article: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWSS/Resources/Desal_mainreport-Final2.pdf--Mschiffler (talk) 02:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

68.188.203.251 (talk) 18:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC) Any way to list plants with links and in particularly note the down time for the prior 24 months? It seems like many plants are off line for various reasons so cannot be actually considered operational.

Retitle article "water desalination?"

I expanded the opening paragraph to note that desalination means salt removal generally, as with soil desalination. Perhaps this article should be renamed "water desalination" (which currently redirects to desalination), and desalination made into a stub article explaining the general definition, with wiki links to water desalination and soil desalination. -Agyle 23:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Forward osmosis

"food grade concentrate". What substance is used? It should be made clear that this will not give rise to pure water, but some kind of soup or syrup. 84.43.92.19 17:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)Michael

That sentence was unreferenced, and I tagged it and other statements in the section as needing citations. According to "Forward Osmosis: A New Approach to Water Purification and Desalination", forward osmosis is used in concentrating food products like fruit juice, but not in desalination. A casual google search of "forward osmosis" (FO) and "desalination" suggests that as of 2006, FO was not used in commercial desalination, and experimental use seems to use ammonia and carbon dioxide rather than food grade concentrate on the non-salt side. -Agyle 07:59, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Until we have evidence of commercial use, I've removed it from the list of methods in use. However, since we do have evidence of research being done, I've popped a mention of it into the experimental section.--Coro (talk) 01:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Largest desalination plant is in Israel?

I believe the world's largest desalination plant is in Ashkelon, Israel, it's now providing and selling 165 000 m3 of water per day and will eventually produce 330,000 m3 per day of water daily. Punjabishere (talk) 22:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It is also the most economical and hi-tech plant. From what I heard the plant use one kind of osmosis technology and involvement of nanotech, they used nanotech to produce a huge plastic film and when filled with sea water only fresh water can penetrate, that reduce the cost significantly! sollar power being used to run the factory, after the sunset the workers start to clean the film, mainly removing the salt from the surface of the film. The biggest cost is the film or to clean the film. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.117.228.62 (talk) 16:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, judging by the numbers alone, the Tampa Bay plant also rivals the one in the Emirates. Since "World's largest water desalination plant" is such a nice greenwashing trophy, there is reason to assume that the UAE would use its influence on Wikipedia to inflate such a claim. Elias (talk) 16:10, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Actual power rating

I found in the article only 4 kWh per m³ sea water. This is not state of the art. New systems with pressure recovery are at 2.5 kWh electric power / m³.

Here a desalination cost calulator

When it comes to the task to reduce carbon dioxide to a level before using fossile energy, desalination for irrigation dry areas could be a key technology.

--Pege.founder (talk) 13:06, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Clarification

"Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. It is used on many ships and submarines."

• I can't be sure whether this is referring to the salt being used or the process used on ships and submarines. Any ideas?

"Saudi Arabia's desalination plants account for about 24% of total world capacity."

• This sounds like the plants account for 24% of all desalination worldwide, but it could also be referring to using 24% of the world's energy capacity. Any ideas? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neum (talk • contribs) 22:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

COORD template

How is the {{coord}} template relevant for this article? I believe it should be removed. Timneu22 (talk) 16:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

History?

Where's the history. I opened this page to read about the history of Desalination. But there was no info. Somebody please upload the history of Desalination plants. Tri400 (talk) 11:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Gallons vs cubic meters

There seems to be somewhat of an edit war about citing gallons vs. citing cubic meters. I think we should use whichever unit of measurement is cited in the source. If someone wishes to cite the other unit, it can be added in parenthesis after the original unit. Grundle2600 (talk) 22:44, 19 July 2008 (UTC) What is going on here ? SI units are used throughout the world and are easier to use than US gallons / acre feet or pounds. Lets just stick to SI units!

i love pie —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.180.90 (talk) 09:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with Mr(s?) Grundle2600. However, when non-SI units are being used that happen to be non-uniquely defined, the actual "taste" used should be mentioned. In this case I had to divide the m³ by the gallons to find that here 1 gallon = 3,78 m³, so that apparently the US gallon was used. El Paso in in the USA, but Aruba is a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Europe), so it was not obvious that the US gallon was used.

Therefore, in cases like this, I would suggest that an ambiguous unit like "gallon" (or "mile", or whatever) be preceded by either "imperial" or "US", (or "nautical" in case of miles), whichever applies.

--HHahn (Talk) 20:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Vapor-compression vs Evaporation/condensation

Can anyone provide an explanation as what difference exist, if any? Right now, I'm inclined to remove the latter from the list, but will wait a week for a response before doing so. --Coro (talk) 01:36, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, the question should be phrased in a different way, I believe : if formulated this way is tantamount to asking whether a red jacket is warmer than black hat.

Evaporative desalinators always work on the evaporation/condensation, whichever their type : multiflash, multiple effect or vapour compression. The concept is, I feed thermal energy (steam, electricty, etc) to create an evaporation in the water body to be desalted, and as a result I condense vapours that have no (well, almost) salt in them.

The specific case of vapour compression works in the same way; in it, the energy source is (usually) electricity driving a vapour compressor : the compressor will increase the pressure of the vapours released in the evaporator body, so that these vapours will condense if cooled by the same liquor circulating in the body. the heat supplied by condensation will grant evaporation, and so forth. If you are familiar with Italian language, give a look here; schemes may be explicative.--Ub (talk) 15:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Passarell Process

There is reference in the article to a so-called Passarell process. I used the link, and this is what I would call, optimistically, a goodwill effort from a non-specialist. Unless somebody gives sounder evidence of the existence of such a process, I will delete the reference. --Ub (talk) 14:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Searches for information on the Passarell process seem to invoke a lot of perpetual motion references. Given that the ideal gas law shows us that the energy saved by evaporating in a vacuum will be spent creating the vacuum, I am not surprised that this does not exist beyond the patent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.2.247.23 (talk) 22:27, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like perpetual motion to me - the prices quoted for this process are either perpetual motion or Harry potteresque. Frankly I dont believe them. Thermal desalination processes have always been on a par with RO for cost and with energy costs rising - I dont see this changing to the extent portrayed in the Passarell(i) process. Sorry as I would like to be a true believer. §

strange sentence on supply options

The article currently says:

Increased water conservation and water use efficiency remain the most cost effective priority for supplying water.

But conservation and increased efficiency obviously don't supply any water at all! They do reduce the amount of water demand, thereby causing less supply to be required, but this is a very weird way to word that. --Delirium (talk) 03:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

This article should not have been moved from "Desalination" to "Water desalination" without a discussion first.

There is now a desalination disambiguation page that links to water desalination and soil desalination. But every use of the term desalination that I've seen in the media refers to water, not soil. So I added "This article is about water desalination. For soil desalination, see soil desalination" to the beginning of this article. I can't move this article back until after the disambiguation page is deleted. Grundle2600 (talk) 23:47, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for moving it back! Grundle2600 (talk) 00:17, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I have moved the article back to Desalination. The disambiguation page only had links to two articles, Desalination and Soil salinity control. A disambiguation page is only appropriate when there are three or more articles to choose between. When there are only two articles, hatnotes at the top of both articles, with links to the other article are appropriate. See WP:DAB for more information. If anyone thinks this article should be moved (possibly to water desalination, then it should be discussed here on the talk page to reach consensus first. — LinguistAtLarge • Talk  00:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. — LinguistAtLarge • Talk  00:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

On my user talk page I have been rebutted for making the move, and I have replied and I have rejected arguments. Yet I accepted the back move and agreed that prior discussion would have been more appropriate. Still, I think the suggestion above "Retitle article "water desalination?" by Agyle does make sense. In the past I have made similar moves "Salinity control" and "Drainage system" without problem and in the second case with a compliment. Life is variable.R.J.Oosterbaan (talk) 01:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I support the move to water desalination

KVDP (talk) 06:56, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to move this article to "Water desalination"

Recently I made that move, but it was undone. See the discussion above and on my talk page. When desalination can refer to two different things like A-desalination and B-desalination it is logical to call these items as such and make a disambiguation page. There are peace makers and trouble makers and it would be wrong to make a page about trouble makers and call it simply "makers". R.J.Oosterbaan (talk) 02:30, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

This is a repeat of the proposal given before on this page, see Talk:Desalination#Retitle article. For opponents see the discussion on user talk:R.J.Oosterbaan#Moving desalination. However, recently I created the page Environmental impact of irrigation and there already existed a disambiguation page Environmental impact with ONLY TWO items, but I could now SMOOTHLY enter the new page. Disambiguation pages give a logical structure to Wikipedia, even when it concerns two items. R.J.Oosterbaan (talk) 16:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

The headache that I see here is that most people in the Desalination industry already automatically assume that desalination discussions relate to water as a matter of course. And in all the environmental discussions where desalination comes up, it is typically assumed that water is involved. Unless the idea is to force people into becoming aware that another kind of desalination exists, all the alleged disambiguation does is add another click to their search. Because I occasionally keep track of agricultural issues in California, I have come across articles relating soil salinity and soil desalination. But these articles always make it clear that they are covering "Soil Desalination" rather than "Desalination, so as to prevent confusion since there is a tendency to consider to consider "Water Desalination" to be synonymous to "Desalination".--Coro (talk) 04:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

History and etymology sections

Can we have a history and etymology section? Faro0485 (talk) 02:19, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Clarification needed

The beginning of this article states, "The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates." However, further down on the page it is indicated that "the Ashkelon seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant in Israel is the largest in the world."

Does the second statement mean to say that Ashkelon is the largest of its type in the world? SweetNightmares (talk) 00:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC) then woohoo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.75.61.119 (talk) 10:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Existing desalination plants

I notice that no reference is made in the article to existing desalination plants in Malta. To the best of my knowledge over 50% of the potable water there is produced this way, so surely it would be relevant to the article to include information about this. I'm no expert on Maltese water plants nor desalination but I hope someone who is adds some appropriate material as my attempt would, in all likelihood, be riddled with errors. IrishPete (talk) 02:47, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

why?????

why 3 phase induction motars is not used for chemicak reactors????????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.149.49.225 (talk) 09:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

File:PlantaSchemaFiction.png

It was pointed out at the Help desk that File:PlantaSchemaFiction.png is annotated in Spanish. Is this picture necessary to the article? Is there a better version? -- John of Reading (talk) 14:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Millions or billions?

In the paragraph "Saudi Arabia" I undid an anonymous edit that changed "1060 million" to "1.060 billion". This is pretty confusing. A US "billion" is 10⁹, whereas a UK "billion" is 10¹². In this case, the same paragraph uses "litre" (instead of "liter"), thi suggesting being written by a UK author. Even if "litre" where changed to "liter", it remains unsure, as many people seem to be insufficiently aware of these differences. HHahn (Talk) 13:49, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Review article

I have added the following article from Science to the article. This is a significant review article of the current state of desalination and its future prospects; it is an excellent source of information and additional references.

• Elimelech, M.; Phillip, W. A. (2011). "The Future of Seawater Desalination: Energy, Technology, and the Environment" (PDF). Science. 333 (6043): 712–717. doi:10.1126/science.1200488. PMID 21817042.

- J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:40, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

resource in current issue of Environment (September/October 2011)

Resource in current issue of Environment (Volume 53, Number 5, September/October 2011)

http://www.environmentmagazine.org/

Article starting on page 34; The Desalination debate - Lessons Learned thus far by Alon Tal. 99.181.150.29 (talk) 02:02, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2011/September-October%202011/climate-change-full.html would be more specific 99.181.131.7 (talk) 03:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

68.188.203.251 (talk) 18:14, 6 September 2012 (UTC) 68.188.203.251 (talk) 18:19, 6 September 2012 (UTC) These links go direct to current issues not the desal info. Here is desal article link http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2011/September-October%202011/desalination-debate-abstract.html but is only stub, no access to full article.

Suggestions for improvement

Hello, the methods in the article are lacking: only a few methods are described, but the box in the beginning shows many different methods and subtypes of methods. Thus, the Methods section should be improved. Also, in the article there could be a mention about the cost level of each of these methods. I suppose, for example, that the freezing desalination is too expensive, but on the other hand it may be a process that can be scaled up. These kinds of differences between the methods should be described. Also, I think that the list Existing facilities and facilities under construction should be a subarticle and in this article a short intro and a link to the list would be enough. --Hartz (talk) 17:01, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the comment on the "Methods" section. Quite a few methods of distillation come up, but each method only has a sentence or two explaining it. I can try and do some research on this to try and expand this section. I do like your idea of breaking the methods into subtypes but I feel the part of comparing costs may better fit somewhere in the economics section of this article. Pgholami1 (talk) 00:59, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

I added more about various popular methods. It could stand to be a bit further expanded, but I wrote enough for the to get the gist of it. I refrained a bit from writing too much since some already have their own pagesPgholami1 (talk) 00:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

It might be better to remove the random link under "Other Approaches". It is poorly formatted in and serves no purpose really. The statement before it is backed by a study; however, the link is about an individual winning a challenge (although at least with the same method). But since the link is more that of an interview I feel that it should not be referenced let alone linked randomly on this article. If this person's paper on this topic can be found, then that can possibly be used to expand on this topic a little more though. Pgholami1 (talk) 05:01, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Electrochemically mediated seawater desalination

I don't know enough about the subject to know how this should fit in, or if it should have its own page/stub. Here's one link [2] google has more. Brimba (talk) 01:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Splitting article into "Desalination" and "Desalination facilities"

I think that this article should be split into two articles, "Desalination" and "Desalination facilities". What is currently under the title "Existing facilities and facilities under construction" would be moved to the new article. This would remove approximately 2,800 words from this 7,300 word article, which comes out to about 38% (I counted all "edit source" material above the see also section).

In the new "Desalination" article, "Desalination facilities" could be a short section with a link to the main article. Information such as the world's largest or most efficient desalination facility would be appropriate to mention in this section (references and dates should be used for such claims). Outside of this section, facilities should be mentioned when they are relevant.

If you agree or disagree, please leave your comments below. However, if you are expecting a reply from me personally, please leave a message on my talk page. -- Kjkolb (talk) 05:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Generic unit

Hi, I am glad we dont have to del with gallons here, but so far there is no standardized use of m³ per day or year. Please use one sort of unit oper all. I agre with the need for a list. Serten (talk) 12:21, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Please post number of months desalt plant actually produces as rep in previous year

64.134.170.135 (talk) 16:39, 17 November 2013 (UTC) I have posted this before at this (?) or another similar Wiki site. As there is often much delay, changes, implementation problems, and on site security, it is impossible to know if the plant is actually operating and producing. This info would make an understanding of desalt plants feasible. The production info in this article is a repro of the specs for what the plant's operation call for. Continued vague and foggy and reproed info make the claim of desalt unsubstantiated.

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 Resolved This issue has been resolved, and I have therefore removed the tag, if not already done. No further action is necessary.—cyberbot II ^Notify_Online 19:19, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

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Links work. --Pokechu22 (talk) 20:53, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

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Missing Citations

There's quite a few citations needed (in sections titled "Methods", "experimental Techniques", "Facilities", and "In Nature"). The "Methods" section really does need to be updated to either verify the methods explained with a proper citation or updated to include the true method again with citation. Pgholami1 (talk) 00:26, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Missing Reference

Reference number 50 no longer exists. When you click on it to follow the link you encounter a "Error 404" page. The claim about reclamation of wastewater over desalination should be either removed or defended with another source Pgholami1 (talk) 00:44, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

missing citations, "in nature" section seems off

Every statistical fact mentioned is cited, as are any ‘conclusions’ about the facts. Meanwhile, summary and transition sentences are not excessively cited. Everything is relevant to the topic; however, the “in nature” section, while interesting and appropriate for Wikipedia articles about some other things, is slightly distracting because some of it could be mentioned in the overall summary of desalination, and some of it seems very loosely related to the rest of the article, which is about human-designed desalination. Checked a few citations - many of them follow through, but some of them (30, 61, 73) led to error pages, which means there is no longer any way to verify the information in the article that cites those sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ttchserum (talk • contribs) 05:38, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Error in reference list

Reference 18 "Energy Requirements of Desalination processes" is broken. I found the intended article, but I am not well-versed enough in wikipedia to know how to edit the reference list, so here is the proper link: http://www.desware.net/Energy-Requirements-Desalination-Processes.aspx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.237.40.215 (talk) 10:57, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

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Removed the further reading list

I've removed the further reading list. If any of these are really important use them for inline citations:

• Committee on Advancing Desalination Technology, National Research Council. (2008). Desalination: A National Perspective. National Academies Press.
• Desalination: The next wave in global water consumption from TLVInsider
• Elimelech, M.; Phillip, W. A. (2011). "The Future of Seawater Desalination: Energy, Technology, and the Environment" (PDF). Science. 333 (6043): 712–717. Bibcode:2011Sci...333..712E. doi:10.1126/science.1200488. PMID 21817042. S2CID 24189246. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 24, 2012. Significant review article.
• R&D needs for Low CO2 Desalination from MIT EMsmile (talk) 13:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Make the lead section into a better summary

If someone has time it would be great if the lead section could be turned into a better summary of the article (about 4 paragraphs long). Perhaps student editor, AndrewTRTL23? EMsmile (talk) 14:11, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Wave powered desalination appears miscategorized

Wave powered desalination is described as a reverse osmosis technology, not a distillation technology. But I lack the expertise to confirm this. 2001:56A:711D:4500:AC7A:B4F6:581B:81F6 (talk) 13:01, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Missing citation: first commercial RO plant in California?

Noticed there was no citation on the claim that the first commercial reverse osmosis plant was in California. I tried to find a reference myself but came up short. Can anyone else give it a shot? Faielgila (talk) 07:37, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Added.--AntientNestor (talk) 10:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)