DESALINATION OF DRINKING WATER IN FLORIDA Water

DESALINATION OF DRINKING WATER IN FLORIDA

Water Supply Problems That Compel Desalination

Generally. Around the world, primarily in heavily populated zones of the temperate climes, available fresh water sources for municipal-scale, public water supplies have become overtaxed. Either there are shortages, net of demand, or water has been reused so many times that the remaining resource is saltier than is healthy for beasts, plants, or people. At the same time, accumulated brine and even abundant sea water remain available, even inexhaustible, if only desalting technologies can be applied feasibly. Even where fresh water is available, moreover, some commercial processes or machinery require waters of very low dissolved solids contents, such as soft-drink or medicine manufacture or industrial boilers or cooling towers. For these uses, available supplies are normally polished or highly treated for salt removal by individual users. The broadest application for salt removal from water on a municipal scale is the process known as softening, removal of calcium and magnesium--chemicals that interfere with detergent or soap sudsing/ cleansing actions.

Desalting applications also have expanded in part because the finest-mesh membranes suited to desalting are also those that remove the tiniest particles in water (such as microbes) that modern regulatory agencies target in ever-smaller sizes and for their ever-more esoterically perceived harm (Pontius 12-14). Ventresque, Turne

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gallons of water--reported in 1972 had been $0.845/1,000 gal. (Wright 33). Of the membrane plants operating in Florida, Morin reported that two were of the ED type, four were membrane softening (MS--probably in the nanofiltration range of pore sizes, not quite as fine as RO membranes), and 25 were RO plants (Morin 44). The ED plants are 0.3 and 1.2 mgd, the MS plants range from 0.2 to 9.5 mgd, and the RO plants span a range from 0.05 to 6.0 mgd (Morin 44). While Morin includes six American MS plants with a total capacity of about 16 mgd, Conlon et al. reported as long ago as 1990 that U. S. MS capacity was "over 30" mgd (1). Dykes and Conlon in 1989 reported "almost 100 Florida water systems" using membrane technology of "nearly 50 mgd", with plans then for more than three times as much (1). Hahn reported references to other reports concerning four actual freezing plants for desalting. Ttwo were in the 0.015 to 0.060 mgd range, and the other two were 1.0 and 5.0 mgd (341), their whereabouts are unknown. Morin (42-54) reported none to be in Florida. Silver has discounted freezing as "the most complicated of all" the processes (28); and his editor, Proteous, has added a footnote of his own at the same page: "Freezing has

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