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The availability of a high quality potable water source may justify the project alone, with water <br />borne disease currently being the second largest cause of mortality in Mexico. A tabulation of <br />the major benefits of this project to Mexico and Nevada are presented in Tables 4 and 5, <br />respectively. <br />No doubt there will be many other issues that have to be dealt with but are beyond the scope of <br />this White Paper, but those that have been initially identified are presented in Table 3. <br />6.0 ENERGY SOURCES <br />The conversion of seawater to freshwater is energy intensive. For example, if the reverse <br />osmosis (RO) process is used to desalt the seawater, about one (1) megawatt (mw) of power <br />capacity is required for each million gallon (mgd) of product water capacity. By incorporating <br />energy recovery turbines into the high pressure pumping unit, the energy requirement can be <br />reduced to the range of 0.6 to 0.75 mw /mgd of product water. Accordingly, a capacity <br />increment of 30 mgd (1.31 M3 /sec) of product water requires a power capacity of 18 to 23 mw. <br />Additional power will be needed for transporting the product water to Mexicali or to other end <br />users. <br />Since gy energy sources are known to exist in the vicinity of the potential desalting <br />g <br />plant sites, it may be feasible to utilize this resource to generate the power necessary to run the <br />desalting plant. Solar energy could also be considered. However, up to now, such alternative <br />energy sources have been more expensive than conventional sources -- such as energy from <br />thermal power plants. For this reason, conventional thermal power generation would most <br />likely be used -- either from a dedicated power plant or purchased from CFE or a stateside <br />utility. If a dedicated power plant is built, the most likely fuel for the first phase would be oil, <br />t <br />1 11 Carollo Black & Veatch <br />