{"id":115,"date":"2009-02-14T12:24:12","date_gmt":"2009-02-14T10:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/?p=115"},"modified":"2009-02-14T12:47:15","modified_gmt":"2009-02-14T10:47:15","slug":"the-environmental-damage-caused-by-desalination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/2009\/02\/14\/the-environmental-damage-caused-by-desalination\/","title":{"rendered":"THE ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE CAUSED BY DESALINATION"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Borja Monta\u00f1o Sanz<\/p>\n
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Unfortunately, experience has taught us that interaction between desalination<\/p>\n

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companies<\/p>\n

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, government and the general population will often have, at least, a partially<\/span><\/p>\n

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negative effect on the environment. This situation arises because, although environmental<\/p>\n

welfare is important to the economic agents involved, certain short-term objectives are<\/p>\n

considered more relevant (Monta\u00f1o 2008). The question that we aim to answer in this<\/p>\n

article is: why is some environmental damage resulting from desalination not avoided,<\/p>\n

when it is technically feasible to do so? Our hypothesis prior to this article is that although<\/p>\n

environmental welfare is viewed positively by the general population, companies and<\/p>\n

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government alike, all three attribute greater importance to other objectives<\/p>\n

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. This is the hypothesis we seek to contrast.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The current state of desalination in Spain<\/p>\n

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In recent years in Spain, the shortage of water resources has forced the country to<\/p>\n

find solutions to provide access to water. With advances in technology, desalination has<\/p>\n

become an economically viable way of increasing the amount of available water. With the<\/p>\n

change of Government in 2004, the management of water resources underwent an<\/p>\n

important change in Spain. The National Hydrology Plan was countermanded, and was<\/p>\n

replaced by the AGUA program, a particularly relevant initiative in terms of sea-water<\/p>\n

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desalination (<\/p>\n

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Programa A.G.U.A In Alicante 2004).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Desalination methods in Spain and the rest of the world<\/p>\n

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There are two kinds of desalination \u2013 thermal or by membrane. Reverse osmosis is<\/p>\n

the method currently used in Spain. This is a membrane-based system in which sea water<\/p>\n

passes through semi-permeable membranes, overcoming the force of osmosis. The process<\/p>\n

obtains two products: desalinated water, which after post-treatment is fit for human<\/p>\n

consumption, and brine water, which due to its high salt content is returned to the sea. As<\/p>\n

with electrodialysis and other membrane systems, reverse osmosis uses less power than the<\/p>\n

thermal systems, which in Spain are highly expensive to run due to the amount of<\/p>\n

electricity required. Thermal desalination methods first appeared at the end of the 1950s,<\/p>\n

with membrane systems becoming more frequent by the end of the 1970s. Advances in<\/p>\n

technology have focused on reverse osmosis and electrodialysis, and by the end of the<\/p>\n

1990s membrane systems had surpassed thermal methods in terms of global capacity.<\/p>\n

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Harmful effects of desalination on the environment<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The environmental impact of desalination is threefold:<\/p>\n

– The effect of returning the brine water to the sea.<\/p>\n

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– The effect of CO<\/p>\n

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2 <\/span><\/span>emissions resulting from power consumption.<\/span><\/p>\n

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– The visual impact of the desalination plant.<\/p>\n

The possible negative effect of returning brine water to the sea is the most publicized<\/p>\n

consequence of desalination, though as of 2008 its effects are not a cause for concern in<\/p>\n

Spain, as investment to prevent environmental damage from brine has produced positive<\/p>\n

results. Discretional returns to the sea of the brine produced during the desalination process<\/p>\n

would increase the salinity of the sea water at the point of release, affecting the surrounding<\/p>\n

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ecosystem. On Spain\u2019s Mediterranean coast,<\/p>\n

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Posidonia oceanica <\/span>would be damaged, but<\/span><\/p>\n

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marine studies are carried out where the brine is to be returned to the sea to avoid this,<\/p>\n

ensuring that the brine is dumped in desert areas where the salinity cannot harm these<\/p>\n

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algae. To dump the brine in these conditions, conduits often need to be built to avoid the<\/p>\n

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Posidonia <\/span><\/span>fields, piping the brine into a safe area of the sea (<\/span>Zarzo 2006) .<\/span><\/span>Visual impact may be the kind of environmental damage that receives the least attention, due to the fact that the location of desalination plants has not led to any serious visual problems (Ministerio de Medio Ambiente 2006). However, the possible visual<\/p>\n

impact requires efforts from both public and private bodies to optimize the location of these<\/p>\n

plants. There are currently plans to build a plant in Mutxamel, which has led to a series of<\/p>\n

problems in this regard, as the plant will be located in an area not on the coast, with an<\/p>\n

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intake of sea water from the dyke at the mouth of the R\u00edo Seco. This alternative<\/p>\n

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, which has<\/span><\/p>\n

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been studied by the Environment Ministry, prevents both the coastal area of the Serra<\/p>\n

Gelada and the Serra Gelada nature park in Benidorm from being affected.<\/p>\n

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Regarding CO<\/p>\n

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2 <\/span><\/span>emissions linked to desalination, it should be made clear that it is<\/span><\/p>\n

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not the desalination process itself that produces these emissions, but rather the power<\/p>\n

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consumption required for the process. As has occurred with the effects of the visual impact<\/p>\n

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and returning brine to the sea, there have been considerable improvements in recent years<\/p>\n

with regard to power consumption. In 1990, power consumption for desalination was<\/p>\n

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around 8.5 kWh\/m<\/p>\n

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3<\/span><\/span>, whereas in 2004 this figure was down to around 3.8 kWh\/m<\/span>3<\/span><\/span>. New <\/span>energy recovery systems mean this rate can be reduced to 2.7 kWh\/m<\/span><\/span>3<\/span><\/span>. If we suppose that desalination plants work at a power consumption rate of 3.5 kWh\/m<\/span>3<\/span><\/span>, they emit 1.9 kg CO<\/span>2<\/span><\/span>\/m<\/span>3<\/span><\/span>. CO<\/span>2 <\/span><\/span>emissions in desalination are highly affected by the <\/span>country energy efficiency. In Spain, 51% of electricity is generated from heat sources. If the country were to convert to a system such as in France, where 73% of power is nuclear,emissions would be reduced by four, and if Spain converted to the Norwegian system, where 99% of energy has a hydroelectric source, CO<\/span><\/span>2 <\/span><\/span>emissions would be divided by 14.<\/span>Therefore, desalination itself is not directly responsible for CO<\/span><\/span>2 <\/span><\/span>emissions; it is <\/span>rather the power consumption involved, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. To reduce CO<\/span><\/span>2 <\/span><\/span>emissions, the current Ministry has committed to producing as much energy<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Borja Monta\u00f1o Sanz \u00a0 Unfortunately, experience has taught us that interaction between desalination companies \u00a0 \u00a0 , government and the general population will often have, at least, a partially negative effect on the environment. This situation arises because, although environmental welfare is important to the economic agents involved, certain short-term objectives are considered more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":440,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4775,1378,4773,4772,4774],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-analisis-economico-aplicado","tag-borja-montano","tag-energy-desalination","tag-environmental-damage-desalination","tag-university-of-alicante"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/440"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ua.es\/montano\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}