Where Men Desalt the Sea
At AYrig'litsville, they're finding' ways
to turn our oceans into inexhaustible
reservoirs of drinking' water.
the cost of fresh water from the sea
competitive with that of water from
conventional sources — at least, in
most cases.
By FIIWK A. )I0\TG0)II:KV
To most people who come upon it
for the first time, it must all appear
to be a little out of place. And, to be
fair about it, there is something rather
incongruous about the complex of
many-hued pipes, tall towers and odd¬
looking structures standing, as it all
does, right there in the middle of
Wrightsvillc Sound’s flat sweep of
marshy tidcland.
But once you learn that the set-up
is simply one great big laboratory that
needs plenty of salt water to carry on
its work, the ordinary bizarre choice
of a location for it becomes suddenly
obvious.
present spectre of water shortage that
exists in a large part of the world.
The real problem, of course, is not
one of simply desalting seawater. Ships
at sea have been doing it for a century
or more. All that’s necessary is to boil
the salt water, condense the steam,
and the job’s done. The problem is
doing it cheaply enough. It lakes
energy in the form of heat to boil
water, and energy costs money — a
good bit too much right now to render
But it is true that whereas the cost
of water from conventional sources
has been steadily increasing over the
past few years, that from seawater has
been just as steadily decreasing. In
1952, when the present seawater con¬
version progrant was launched, it cost
upwards of $5.00 to produce a thou¬
sand gallons of fresh water front the
sea. Today, as a result of work that’s
been done, the cost is approximately
a fifth as much, being in the neighbor¬
hood of $1.00. In fact, in regions where
sufficient water from any other source
is unavailable, great conversion plants
arc already in operation, producing in
The lorgcit pilot plont at the seowatcr conversion loborotory is the one designed to produce tresh
wotcr from the sco by the freezing process. It hod a capocity of 200,000 gollons of potable voter
per doy when it become operotive eorly in 1965.
They call this spanking new, gleam¬
ing installation, hard by the sea in
southeastern Carolina, the East Coast
Sea Water Conversion Plant, of the
Department of the Interior’s Office of
Saline Water. And imposing though
the name may be, the work being done
there is not one whit less so. For in
this completely unique facility — there
is none other like it in the world —
the fascinating problem of converting
seawater into fresh is being attacked
upon many fronts. From freezing to
distillation to hydrates, the various
processes are constantly undergoing
close scrutiny, in the hope that one
or more of them will, one day. de¬
velop into a means of producing fresh
water from the sea economically
enough to end for all time the ever-
THE STATE. JUNE 15. 1965
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