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Desalinating Sea Water to Ease Water Shortage: Expert
China should step up industrialization of sea water desalination efforts to ease water shortage, an expert suggests.
China is one of the 13 countries with most severe water shortage in the world, with per capita water resources at only 2, 400 cubic meters or one fourth of the world average.
The water shortage is even more serious in its coastal areas, with water resources in some industrial cities averaging only 500 cu m per person, said Ruan Guoling, a senior engineer at the Research Institute for Sea Water Desalination and Comprehensive Use under the State Oceanic Administration.
Ruan said that in those cities it is of great importance to develop sea water desalination to meet increasing demand for water.
China started research in sea water desalination in the 1950s. Coastal regions like Dalian, Shandong and Tianjin have been the first to develop the technology.
The country's largest sea water desalination plant is in Changhai County in Liaodong Peninsula, Liaoning Province in northeast China. On Dachangshan Island where the county seat is located, per capita freshwater resources amount to only 465 cubic meters.
With a desalination capacity of 1,000 cubic meters per day, the plant helped local residents pass the hardest period when a drought hit the county last year, drying up all the reservoirs and ponds there, said Wang Zhenmin, the county's water resources official.
Water shortage appeared in some Chinese cities as early as the 1960s, and more than 300 cities were short of water in the early 1990s. Now, some 100 cities cannot even supply enough water for daily use of their 40 million residents, said Ruan the senior engineer.
Water shortage will be a big threat to China's sustainable development in the long run. By 2030 China's population is expected to reach 1.6 billion, and per capita freshwater resources will reduce to around 1,700 cubic meters.
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