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<br />w <br />CJl <br />CD <br />-.J <br /> <br />Coury and Associates, Inc. <br /> <br />.' <br /> <br />BACKGROUND OF THE DESALINATION INDUSTRY <br /> <br />The seminar thus far has centered on the presence of saline waters <br />in the West, and on the uses that can be made of the salty waters them- <br />selves. In general, for most industrial, municipal and agricultural <br />applications, the saline waters must be purified to some extent before <br />being used. As desalination processes for purification of saline waters <br />become more economic and more established as an industrial technology, <br />the usable water resources will increase significantly. <br /> <br />The desalination of saline waters, to produce water that is salt free <br />or almost so, is both a natural process manifested by rain and snow and <br />a very old man-made process. Early uses of desalination have been to provide <br />high quality distilled water for laboratory use or special industrial <br />applications such as boiler feed water, or to provide drinking water for <br />ocean-going vessels. Small solar stills in desert or arid regions, where <br />slightly saline or brackish-water aquifers are often found, have provided <br />drinking water for domestic animals or small communities. <br /> <br />Several factors have come together in the last decades to greatly <br />expand the use of desalination processes. The wealth of many oil-producing <br />countries located in desert regions provided the means to afford the expensive <br />desalination of sea water, at the same time that the desired industrial <br />and social growth by these countries made possible by this same wealth <br />necessitated the production of fresh water, We can compare this phenomena <br />of national growth depending on the development of water resources, to the <br />growth of the Southwest United States, especially in Southern California, <br />made possible in part by water resources stemming from the giant dam building <br />and water conveyance projects on the Colorado and other rivers. <br /> <br />Desalination of sea water, which contains about 3.5 pounds of dissolved <br />salt per 100 pounds of water, is generally accomplished using the process <br />of distillation and is relatively expensive as has been indicated. Inland <br />brackish waters usually contain much lower concentrations of dissolved salt, <br />ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 pounds of salt per 100 pounds of water. These <br /> <br />1 <br /> <br />,~ <br />