Bracing up to face water shortages, China plans to quadruple its capacity to desalinate seawater to produce up to three million tonnes of desalinated water a day by 2020.
China can now put out 600,000 tonnes of desalinated water a day, and plans are afoot to quadruple it, Mr Chen Lianzeng, Deputy Director of the State Oceanic Administration, told an international conference on seawater desalination at Tianjin.
Seawater desalination has been used in 125 countries throughout the world to supply water to more than 100 million people. China has regarded desalination for more than 40 years as an important means of dealing with water shortages, official China Daily quoted him as saying.
The country plans to quadruple its capacity to desalinate seawater to produce 2.5-3 mt of desalinated water a day by 2020.
According to statistics from the State Oceanic Administration, China collects about 40 billion cubic meters of fresh water from rainfalls every year. Despite this, 400 cities in China suffered droughts in recent times. Tianjin, Hebei, Zhejiang, Shandong and Liaoning now have desalination plants that can put out 100,000 tonnes of fresh water a day.
“Desalination plants use distillation techniques to reduce the amount of chloride ions contained in seawater to a level safe for irrigation and for drinking,” Mr Xia Qing, former deputy director of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, said.
