Too much salt: water desalination plants harm environment: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: Workers walk outside a desalination plant, south of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 2011. REUTERS/Fahad Shadeed

OSLO (Reuters) – Almost 16,000 desalination plants worldwide produce bigger-than-expected flows of highly salty waste water and toxic chemicals that are damaging the environment, a U.N.-backed study said on Monday.

Desalination plants pump out 142 million cubic meters (5 billion cubic feet) of salty brine every day, 50 percent more than previous estimates, to produce 95 million cubic meters of fresh water, the study said.

About 55 percent of the brine is produced in desalination plants processing seawater in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, according to the study by the U.N. University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).

The hyper-salty water is mostly pumped into the sea and, over a year, would be enough to cover the U.S. state of Florida with 30 cms (one foot) of brine, it said of the fast-growing and energy-intensive technology that benefits many arid regions.

Brine, water comprising about five percent salt, often includes toxins such as chlorine and copper used in desalination, it said. By contrast, global sea water is about 3.5 percent salt.

Waste chemicals “accumulate in the environment […]

Full article: Too much salt: water desalination plants harm environment: U.N.