Fresh Water From The Sea

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 18

Fresh Water From The Sea

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter)

LONDON. Britain’s Atomic Energy Authority has taken the first steps towards the economic production of limitless fresh water from the sea.

The Ministry of Technology is backing an unprecedented programme of research and development for a newlydesigned giant plant which could supply the entire domestic water needs of a city of 600,000 people. It has taken the Atomic Energy Authority and a Scottish engineering firm seven months to design the plant. It can be built immediately anywhere in the world, desalinate 30,000,000 gallons of sea-water a day, and in certain conditions be run economically by an atomic reactor. This could be the advanced gas-cooled reactor recently approved for Britain’s second generation series of atomic power plants, which can produce power more cheaply than those using such conventional fuels as coal. An Advanced Gas-Cooled reactor could, with little modification, simultaneously provide 480 megawatts of electric power and drive a desalination plant capable of taking the salt out of 60,000.000 gallons of water a day for 4s to 5s per 1000 gallons. The present design, though more than 20 times bigger than anything working at present, is for a 30,000,000gallon plant, because this was the size thought most likely to find an immediate export market But in fact inquiries have already been received for plants in the 60,000,000gallon range. A three-year programme has now been started to develop units each capable of tackling 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 gallons a day.,

These could be linked together into mammoth plants for a major attack on the world-wide shortage of fresh water. The plant works by the muti-flash distillation process. Sea water enters a series of chambers, where it is vapourised at successively lower pressures. It condenses as pure water, and in the process heats the incoming salt water. Final vaporising heat is applied by steam from an outside source, in this case, possibly taken for the first time from an advanced gascooled reactor.