The Government announces the installation of desalination plants to deal with the drought
In the event that it does not rain in the coming months and the emergency situation due to drought worsens, the Government has announced the installation of ten new desalination plants to guarantee water supply in Barcelona and the metropolitan area, as well as on the Costa Brava. A floating desalination plant will be deployed in the port of Barcelona that will come into operation in the event that the Ter-Llobregat system enters emergency phase 2 – a scenario that the executive does not expect to happen before the month of October -, and They will install 12 mobile desalination plants to supply a dozen municipalities in Alt Empordà from June. The aim of these devices is to secure water reserves and avoid at all costs the need to apply tougher limitations than those already contemplated in the drought plan.
A more economical solution than bringing water by boat
The Councilor for Climate Action, David Mascort, has stated that this solution prioritized by the Generalitat is more economical than bringing water by boat. The cost of water production through a floating desalination plant will be around €6/m³, while with ships it would rise to €10/m³. So, despite the initial investment of around 100 million euros to put the floating desalination plant in the port of Barcelona into operation, considerable financial savings are expected in the long term.
The operation of the floating desalination plant
The floating desalination plant uses a system of boats equipped with the necessary technology to carry out a reverse osmosis desalination process. This process consists of pumping the water at high pressure towards a semi-permeable membrane that retains the salts, making it possible to use approximately 45% of the water that is filtered.
Mobile desalination plants for the Alt Empordà
As for the twelve mobile desalination plants in the Alt Empordà, they are intended to supply water to the municipalities of the Costa Brava North that are already in emergency phase 2. These mobile desalination plants will cover approximately 35% of the municipalities’ demand most affected by the drought and which are supplied by the ETAP Empuriabrava.
