Hi, Nikolay Hard to answer. ...

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Hi, Nikolay

Hard to answer. It all depends on the amount of resource and on the use of the resource. The disadvantages of desalination are quite clear: the costs. It requires an important initial investment. Also, maintenance costs are high as well. An alternative to reduce the maintenance is to desalinate brackish groundwater, as one gets rid of problems like entraintment or impingement of marine life and gains the soil's natural attenuation. The advantage is also clear: the resource is unlimited and its quality is more than acceptable, even for drinking purposes. Treating waste-water is cheaper, but the amount of treated efluents is generally smaller than that of a desalination plant. In addition, the quality of the treated fluid is generally poorer than that of desalinated water. If the purpose is to use it for irrigation, then it's fine (with some tolerance). As for drinking, I would never use treated waste water.

And that's my opinion...

Cheers

Andres

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Andres, are you sure that you never drank treated waste water? Have you heard about the water cycle? The river Rhine in Germany wich starts in switzerland and reaches the sea in the Netherlands has been drunken approx ten times on ints way.....means that the water works alongside the river are distributing "ex-waste water" to the public. anyway why would we need to drink treated waste water? there are plenty of other ways to utilize this ressource. However I generally agree with your statement. If you look at the figures about how little desalinated water is actually consumed by humans and how much is used for other purposes....Recharge the aquifer with treated effluent this is practised since decades in orange county and in Belgium at least.

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Hi, Ulrich

I fully agree with your post. It all depends on the definition for waste water. Is that rejected drink-water or the usually "dark" effluent of a treatment station. Thanks for the data about the Rhein. Certainly, I'm sure I'm nowadays drinking water from there :-).

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