Addressing Water Scarcity: The Role of Desalination

Rapid population growth, urbanization, and increasing global water demand have intensified the water scarcity challenge in many countries. Despite nearly two-thirds of the Earth’s surface being covered by water, only a small fraction is suitable for human consumption due to the high salt content in oceans. In fact, in 2022, the United Nations reported that 2.2 billion people lacked safely managed drinking water, with over 700 million having no access to even basic water services.

There are many ways to try and mitigate this water crisis and one of them is desalination, the process of removing salt from seawater. While it cannot single-handedly avert a global water crisis, it significantly expands access to clean drinking water.

The importance and benefits of desalination:

While desalination has drawbacks like being an energy-intensive and costly process, it remains important to significantly enhance access to clean drinking water, offering several key benefits:

• Enhanced Water Quality: The desalination of seawater results in high-quality freshwater that adheres to strict drinking water standards, ensuring safe and clean water for consumption.
• Additional Water Sources: It provides a sustainable and reliable source of fresh water, reducing dependence on limited rainfall, surface water, and groundwater.
• Economic growth: Desalinated water serves multiple purposes, including municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses. This versatility supports economic development and improves overall quality of life.

Systems and processes:

Ovivo’s Fresh Water Makers, stemming from their Caird & Rayner heritage brand, efficiently remove salt and other impurities from seawater to produce potable water and water for other uses. These systems are designed to be exceptionally robust and reliable, requiring minimal operator intervention and maintenance. They are specifically engineered to function in remote and challenging environments, such as offshore platforms, floating production storage & offloading (FPSO) vessels, and other upstream assets.

The Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination technology employs semi-permeable membranes to remove salt and other impurities from the seawater. This technology is mainly utilized in the Middle East, where the combination of a hot climate, abundant surrounding water bodies, and a capable economy makes it an ideal solution.

“Ovivo’s RO desalination systems have been reliably operating for many years in a wide range of environments. From small highly specified offshore applications to larger municipal plants, producing water for human consumption as well as water for industrial purposes”, says Chris Bell , Product Manager, Ovivo UK.

Water scarcity is one of the top threats facing the world in the coming decades. Ovivo strives to meet client and international specifications by providing custom-designed systems. The solutions have produced fresh water, utility water, and processed water for crude oil desalting and enhanced oil recovery in some of the most challenging environments.

For more information about the systems and solutions, check out the product page, and feel free to contact an expert for further information or project inquiries here.