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China’s Massive Effort to Purify Seawater Is Drying Up
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601861/chinas-massive-effort-to-purify-seawater-is-drying-up/[font face=Serif][font size=5]China’s Massive Effort to Purify Seawater Is Drying Up[/font]
[font size=4]Stalled projects and underperforming plants have hampered China’s desalination plans.[/font]
by Yiting Sun | July 11, 2016
[font size=3]The site of a seawater desalination plant that could provide up to one-third of the water consumed by Beijing’s households lies about 200 kilometers southeast of the parched Chinese capital. In 2014, China’s state news media reported that the facility, to be located on the shores of Bohai Bay, would be completed by 2019, contributing to the three million tons of fresh water per day of desalination capacity that China wants to have built by 2020.
Since then, the planning of this facility has been touch and go: it’s been approved by the provincial development agency and listed as one of the major projects in China’s initiative to build a supercity around Beijing, but it’s still far from certain when the construction will begin.
After an initial boom—from 2006 to 2010, China’s desalination capacity grew nearly 70 percent each year, according to government statistics—China missed its target of producing 2.2 to 2.6 million tons of desalinated water a day by 2015. As of December last year, China’s total installed capacity was 1.03 million tons a day, according to the China Desalination Association.
…
But challenges abound in China’s ambition to bring more desalination capacity online. Because of its energy-intensive nature, desalination is expensive—while most Chinese pay less than 50 cents for a ton of tap water, the average price of desalinated water in China is 75 cents to $1.20 per ton. This means the water is a hard sell for urban water authorities, and local governments are often reluctant to commit to building desalination plants.
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4]Stalled projects and underperforming plants have hampered China’s desalination plans.[/font]
by Yiting Sun | July 11, 2016
[font size=3]The site of a seawater desalination plant that could provide up to one-third of the water consumed by Beijing’s households lies about 200 kilometers southeast of the parched Chinese capital. In 2014, China’s state news media reported that the facility, to be located on the shores of Bohai Bay, would be completed by 2019, contributing to the three million tons of fresh water per day of desalination capacity that China wants to have built by 2020.
Since then, the planning of this facility has been touch and go: it’s been approved by the provincial development agency and listed as one of the major projects in China’s initiative to build a supercity around Beijing, but it’s still far from certain when the construction will begin.
After an initial boom—from 2006 to 2010, China’s desalination capacity grew nearly 70 percent each year, according to government statistics—China missed its target of producing 2.2 to 2.6 million tons of desalinated water a day by 2015. As of December last year, China’s total installed capacity was 1.03 million tons a day, according to the China Desalination Association.
…
But challenges abound in China’s ambition to bring more desalination capacity online. Because of its energy-intensive nature, desalination is expensive—while most Chinese pay less than 50 cents for a ton of tap water, the average price of desalinated water in China is 75 cents to $1.20 per ton. This means the water is a hard sell for urban water authorities, and local governments are often reluctant to commit to building desalination plants.
…[/font][/font]
