Years of drought have left decision-makers with little option but to meet a bigger share of freshwater need for the growing population from seawater, said the deputy for supervising operations at the National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran on Thursday.
Hamidreza Kashfi was speaking in a meeting with experts on water desalination on the sidelines of the 14th International Water and Wastewater Exhibition at Tehran International Permanent Fairground, October 3-6.
At present, there are 73 desalination plants in different regions with a capacity of processing 420,000 cubic meters of saline water per day, and 148 million cubic meters per annum, ISNA reported
Until 2021 Iran plans to reach daily desalination capacity of 600,000 cubic meters of water.
Desalination refers to any of several processes that remove the excess salt and other minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water.
Seawater or saltwater is desalinated to produce water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. One by-product of desalination is salt. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on cost-effective provision of fresh water for human use. Along with recycled wastewater, it is one of the few rainfall-independent water sources.
Referring to the coastal areas off the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman, Kashfi said, “The water need of people living along the 100km border in Sistan and Baluchestan, Hormozgan, Khuzestan and Bushehr provinces should be met fully from seawater in the not too distant future”.
Currently, water desalination units provide a considerable amount of potable water in the northern and southern coastal areas.
To tackle the water crisis across continents, desalination is becoming an attractive method to produce water from saline water sources. Around coastal regions where salty water resources are in abundance, large and semi-large desalination plants are desirable.
> A Growing Industry
A total of 56 desalination projects with a capacity to process 78 mcm of saline water will be operational soon and 17 more facilities are under construction that will produce another 70 mcm.
Experts believe Iran's fledgling desalination industry can and should meet the need for potable water in the Persian Gulf littoral provinces. As a result, tapping into the sea to produce clean water is high on the Energy Ministry agenda as it is a much more viable in maintaining a sustainable supply of water rather than depleting the fast dwindling underground resources, most of which are on the verge of drying up.
According to officials, 18 provinces covering nearly 60% of the population are on the verge of water tension and addressing the worsening water crisis has become a major preoccupation of experts and policymakers.
Environmentalists and economic experts have routinely warned successive governments in Tehran over the past several decades that the present water consumption patterns are not sustainable, namely in the key agricultural sector that consumes almost 90% of the water in the drought-hit country.
This year’s International Water and Wastewater Exhibition is hosting 244 domestic and foreign companies, including 216 domestic companies and 28 firms from Austria, Italy, China, Germany, the UK, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, the US, Turkey and France.
