Desalination: The answer to El Niño

The onset of the El Niño phenomenon is going to make water even more scarce, with the World Meteorological Organization warning that erratic weather patterns could lead to droughts in some places and heavy rains in others. In Metro Manila, people are bracing themselves for a possible water shortage with Angat Dam’s water level continuing to drop at a rate of half a meter every day.

Angat supplies 90 percent of Metro Manila’s water requirements, and the current 182.32-meter level is dangerously close to the critical 180-meter level. According to the UN, each person needs a minimum of 20 liters a day for drinking, washing and cooking. By 2025, it is estimated that “two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions caused by water scarcity” – which is why more and more countries are looking at desalination as a solution.

In simple terms, desalination is the process of turning seawater into potable drinking water by removing the salinity (or salt components). One process involves distillation where seawater is heated to produce steam with the condensation harnessed and placed into a separate container – leaving the salt behind. However, this process requires a lot of energy and is not very practical when you’re talking about huge amounts of seawater. The desalination process widely used today is called reverse osmosis where special filters with semi-permeable membranes (holes actually) allow water molecules to pass through but not the salt. The clean water is subjected to further treatment to turn it into fresh drinking water.

One country that has shown amazing innovation in desalination technology is Israel – a nation constantly under threat of a water crisis, where more than half of the land is arid desert. In the last six decades, Israel has been relying on desalination to supply one fourth of its water requirements. As an official pointed out, the country can produce 600 million cubic meters of water with just the flick of a finger or the touch of a button.  At a desalination plant in Ashkelon for example, 16,000 cubic meters of seawater is converted into fresh water every hour, supplying 15 percent of Israel’s yearly water requirements.

In fact, California is getting help from a leading Israeli desalination company to build a $922 million plant touted as the largest in the Western hemisphere. About two-thirds of California (population 38 million) suffers from exceptionally severe drought conditions, and they’re looking at Israel’s expertise to help mitigate the water crisis. We’re told Japan is also interested in putting up a floating desalination plant in response to the growing demand for alternative sources of freshwater supply. Industry observers say the market for floating plants may hit as much as $3.9 billion in yearly sales in 10 years, with forecast for the global desalination market seen to hit $15 billion by 2018.

Environmentalists are concerned that the highly concentrated salt and other minerals being returned to the ocean after desalination could harm fish and other marine creatures, but industry players say tighter environmental rules and monitoring are being applied. Some also argue that desalination is costly with billions needed to put up a plant, but the benefits far outweigh the cost. Besides, reverse osmosis technology requires a lot less energy than distillation, significantly cutting desalination costs. Solar power can help solve the energy factor in desalination along with other forms of clean, renewable energy.

Last year, the Cebu City government signed a joint venture agreement to put up a P750 million water desalination plant (said to be the biggest in Visayas and Mindanao) that is projected to supply 22,000 cubic meters a day, although the plant can supply as much as 50,000 cubic meters a day. Perhaps desalination is an option that forward-looking government officials or water business entities like Maynilad and Manila Water can study to provide a long term solution to our water woes. China, Hong Kong, Singapore and other nations are using desalination for their water supply, so why can’t we also do the same? After all, we have an abundance of solar energy and the salt from the process can be converted to table salt. As some pointed out, the initial cost will far outweigh the benefits down the line especially if we consider that many of our freshwater resources like rivers and groundwater from aquifers are beginning to dry up.

We can’t rely forever on stopgap measures, asking people to conserve water and renewing calls for the construction of rainwater harvesting facilities – assuming that the rains would come. And when they do, the El Niño phenomenon would make the rains very intense, resulting in floods as a weather expert pointed out.

Biting the Apple

The latest chapter in the long-running legal battle between Apple and Samsung saw the American company getting awarded $120 million plus a ruling that found Samsung guilty of infringing two of four Apple patents. On the other hand, the jury also declared Apple guilty of infringing one of two Samsung patents. It’s a mixed verdict that has observers convinced that Apple got “short changed” since the $120 million is nowhere near the $2 billion demanded by the American company in terms of damages. In the first round of the battle two years ago, Samsung was told to cough up $930 million in damages but managed to prevent an order barring the sale of its smartphones.

The smartphone giants have spent more than a billion dollars in litigation expenses with the battlefront spread across four continents in almost four years – and the only ones who are the real winners are the lawyers from both sides. In any case, the verdict will allow Samsung to continue getting a bite of the Apple.

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