The quest for clean drinking water for the heavily-populated coastal areas has prompted the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) to take a closer look at seawater desalination.
The KWA has opened discussions with the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences for identifying desalination systems that are suitable for the State's coastal environment.
The Fisheries Department also has been linked to the proposal as coastal fishing villages and harbours are potential beneficiaries, KWA managing director S. Venkatesapathy said.
Following a preliminary discussion, the KWA, the Fisheries Department, and the NIOT have appointed nodal officers for examining the viability of the proposal, a senior KWA official said.
“Desalination technologies are currently more expensive than conventional water treatment methods. There are multiple technologies available today. But we also need to assess factors such as the water requirement and the availability of land for taking the proposal forward,” the official said.
In the just-concluded session of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, Water Resources Minister Roshy Augustine had outlined the government's plans to collaborate with NIOT on seawater desalination, adding that detailed studies would be required before a pilot scheme is rolled out, given the cost factor.
Kerala has a 590-km coastline. But coastal regions also tend to be plagued by drinking water shortages as, invariably, they exist at the tail-end of water supply schemes. That being the case, they are also the first places where the taps run dry when a disruption occurs in the distribution network, according to KWA officials.
NIOT, Chennai, has successfully demonstrated technologies such as Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LTTD) process which hinges on the temperature variations in sea water at varying depths. In this process, the warm surface water is flash-evaporated at a low pressure. Fresh water is produced by condensing the resulting vapour with colder sea water.
