Americans should recycle, use reusable grocery bags, and conserve gasoline as climate change is becoming more urgent. However, many people may not realize just how heavily they rely upon fossil fuels.
Petroleum transports crops but it can also grow them in many cases.
Plants that produce water for irrigation or drinking from salt water use energy from fossil fuels. A new technique called desalination could make it much easier.
70% of the Earth’s surface are covered by water. However, only 1% of this water is used for drinking, bathing, and irrigation. Why is this? The ocean makes up the majority of the water in the world. It is too salty to be used for daily use. It is necessary to desalinate ocean water or remove salt from it for drinking. To separate salt from water, current techniques use heat pressure or membranes.
Ocean-desalination systems work on a very small scale and provide fresh water for boats and submarines. To supply fresh water, some governments use water-desalination plant. The world’s largest desalination plant, Jebel Ali, supplies 300,000,000 cubic meters of water each year to the United Arab Emirates.
The National Research Council says that current desalination technologies do more harm than good. The ocean-desalination plants use energy and contribute to global warming. This could increase drought and flood risk. Desalination plants need to be combined today with more reliable water supplies in order to meet community needs. Businesses and governments have to look for sustainable water sources as populations increase and freshwater becomes scarcer. Ocean water might become an almost inaccessible resource thanks to new technologies.
Power of the Dream Ventures, Inc. (powerofthedream.com), a Hungarian-based technology company, is building a desalination prototype that could revolutionize how the world gets water.
The desalination device can be made portable once it is completed. The desalination technology can be scaled, which means that it could supply water to entire villages. It will be powered by solar and wind energy, making it more affordable than other technologies.
