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<br /> <br />~ <br />00 <br />rv <br />~ <br /> <br />SECTION 5 <br /> <br />SIMULATION OF DESALTING COST-EFFECTIVENESS <br /> <br />INTRODUCTION <br /> <br />The development of desalination technology in the United <br />States has been guided by the basic objective outlined by <br />Congress to the U. S. Department of the Interior's Office of <br />Saline Water (now combined with the Office of Water Resources <br />Research to form a single department entitled, "Office of <br />Water Research and Technology"). This objective is: <br /> <br />"to provide for the development of practicable <br />low-cost means for producing from sea water or <br />from other saline waters (brackish and other <br />mineralized or chemically charged waters), water <br />of a quality suitable for agriculture, industrial, <br />municipal, and other beneficial consumptive uses." <br /> <br />The objective of desalination as listed above has been <br />given a massive research and development effort although the <br />application to large scale systems is only now beginning to <br />occur. The traditional scope of saline water conversion <br />programs has been to reclaim otherwise unsuitable waters for <br />specific needs. However, this scope has dealt almost exclusively <br />with utili~ation of product water directly rather than returning <br />it to receiving waters in order to improve the overall resource <br />quality. 1hus, with mounting concerns for managing salinity on <br />a regional or basin-wide scale, the potential for applying <br />desalination within the framework of an overall salinity control <br />strategy is an interesting one. In fact, the use of desalting <br />systems to resolve critical salinity problems is already being <br />planned as part of the Colorado River International Salinity <br />Control Project agreement between the United States and the <br />Republic of Mexico (U. S. Department of the Interior, 1973). <br /> <br />In the context of regional salinity control, desalting <br />costs can he expressed in dollars per unit volume of salt <br />extracted in the brine discharge rather than the conventional <br />index of costs per unit volume of reclaimed product water. In <br />this manner the respective feasibility of desalination and <br />other alterhatives for salinity management can be systematically <br />compared during the processes of developing strategies for <br /> <br />23 <br /> <br />~. <br /> <br />,~ <br /> <br />~ <br /> <br />w _~ <br /> <br />