Seawater Solution

Scientists predict that by Halloween of this year, the world population will reach 7 billion, the highest in history. 1.8 billion People are predicted to live in areas of extreme water scarcity by 2025. Desalination, the removal of salt from water, is increasingly being proposed as a solution. But the process is very expensive and inefficient and scientists must commit to overcoming these obstacles before acting on it. These modern desalination plants use a technology called reverse osmosis to remove the salt. But most of the costs come from generating the electricity to run the plant. And in the United States, funding is unavailable. In order to meet the demands of our increasingly thirsty world, they need to become cheaper to build and operate. This is a very legitimate solution to a very big problem, but many barriers stand in the way of this solution. Another puzzle is what to do with the salt at the end of the desalination. I think this sounds like a very good solution to the water crisis, but I personally think that we should also explore other cheaper alternatives.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110804-fresh-water-crisis-desalination-environment-science/