Tampa Bay Florida Area Drinks Oil-Fired Water
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 06.17.08
There isn't much choice, as groundwater reserves are insufficient. But really...is bottled water any worse than this?
Four years behind schedule and nearly $80 million over the original budget, the nation's largest sea water desalination facility finally supplies much-needed drinking water to 2.4 million people in the Tampa Bay region.We say "oil-fired" because the desalination is highly electricity intensive and oil burning turbines are Florida's dominant source of electricity.
To remove salt, water must be piped at high pressures through membranes with holes 1/1,000 the width of a human hair. Creating that pressure requires a vast amount of energy, ...
More Florida communities want in on desalination as the population continues to grow, much of it from immigration.
Wondering where the oil comes from for Florida's electrical power generation? Try Venezuela. Viva Orimulsion! Long live sulfer scrubbers!
Patented under the name Orimulsion, the fuel comes from Venezuela's vast Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt and can be burned in power plants as an alternative to coal or to the international standby, Heavy Fuel Oil No. 6, after a plant has been modified. The most expensive part of the modification is adding scrubbers to smokestacks to remove Orimulsion's relatively high concentration of sulphur, which causes acid rain, from emissions.When the carbon cap and trade program is finally enacted, how much you want to bet Florida politicians demand free credits to cover their lawn watering and real estate boom habits?
Can't put too much pressure on Hugo either. Florida would get pretty thirsty.
Via::Herald Tribune, More parched communities ponder desalination solution AND New York Times, Venezuela Pushing 'Liquid Coal' Image credit::RoPlant, Tampa Bay Florida Reverse Osmosis Plant
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There isn't much choice?
I choose to live on the moon, and I insist the government provide me with clean, fresh water (no distilled urine for me) and a well paved highway, so I can drive from Vancouver to MoonBase whenever I would like a weekend getaway. And if my lunar vacation home gets cooked by a freak solar storm, well, that would be as unexpected as a wet basement on a flood plain or drought in a desert, so taxpayers should pay for my new Moon House.
This desalination plant is great! Now, we need to continue to push for alternate forms of energy. The reason "greenies" seem to often get a bad wrap is because of pessimists like this writer. I see this as a step forward. Be greatful for the small steps that are finally being taken.
They should go solar and minimize the amount of desalinization needed by making water suitable for irrigation so that any potable irrigation water can be saved for drinking.
Seems like it would be a good idea to put in some hydro-power turbines just offshore to power the plant. Just sayin'.
This is great. I think we should accept that rising freshwater demand caused by increasing affluence of developing countries and decreased supply due to global warming (higher evaporation, less snowmelt) will be met, by and large, through desalination. Since desalination is expensive this will lead to improved efficiency in many industries, but it will still happen.
It will also provide even more incentive to push for clean energy on the grid.
The quoted Orimulsion article was published in 1990. Venezuela stopped making Orimulsion in late 2006.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-30170782_ITM