In recent 45 years, the sea water desalination industry has grown from virtually zero, to over 60,000,000 m3/d of treated water capacity. Worldwide, almost 16,000 desalination facilities have been built.
Fresh water is often talked about as being “the next gold”, and for good reason. 97.5% of all water on Earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5% as fresh water. 70% of that fresh water is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland and < 1% of the world’s fresh water is accessible for direct human use. With agriculture being responsible for 87 % of the total water used globally, about one-third of the world’s population lives in countries that are experiencing water stress. This begs the question, how can we turn salt water into fresh water? The process of turning salt water into fresh water is called “desalination” and over 16,000 desalination plants have now been built worldwide:
source: www.nanalyze.com
With such a huge number of desalination plants being built, the question is where are they located? The below chart shows the distribution of desalination plants by country:
source: www.desalination.com
