Desalination and Alternative Water Sources

Where renewable freshwater is scarce but energy and capital are available, desalination has become a central strategy for securing municipal water supply, chiefly through reverse osmosis (RO), a membrane-based process that forces seawater through a semi-permeable membrane under high pressure to filter out dissolved salts. The technology traces its practical origin to the work of Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan at the University of California, Los Angeles, who developed the first practical asymmetric cellulose acetate membrane around 1959-1960, a breakthrough that made RO far more energy-efficient than the older thermal distillation methods it gradually displaced. According to figures compiled by the International Desalination Association, global desalination capacity now exceeds roughly 95-100 million cubic meters of water per day, concentrated overwhelmingly in the Middle East and North Africa, with Saudi Arabia among the largest producers historically through its state-run Saline Water Conversion Corporation.