3. What about in South Africa?
In South Africa desalination is used quite widely by mines to clean up polluted mine water and acid mine drainage. Small to medium-scale desalination has also been used in coastal towns during times of drought. Six municipalities are currently using small-scale reverse osmosis plants to desalinate water for bulk water supply.
Mossel Bay has a medium size desalination plant capable of producing 15 million litres of potable water per day but the plant is currently on standby as the dams in the area are full. Standby mode requires continuous maintenance to keep the plant functional which costs the municipality money whilst not producing any water.
The Knysna municipality has a desalination plant capable of producing 2 million litres per day which is currently shut down for maintenance and repairs. During normal operation, the plant is used at the discretion of the municipality. Currently there is sufficient water in Knysna so use of the plant is minimised due to the high operational costs.
Plettenberg (Bitou municipality) has an operational desalination plant producing 2 million litres per day.
There are two desalination plants in the Ndlambe municipality, namely the Bushmanâs River Mouth and Cannon Rocks plants, that produce 1.8 and 0.75 million litres per day respectively. Both plants are currently producing at full capacity.
The Cederberg municipality has a plant in Lamberts Bay with a capacity of 1.7 million litres per day (upgradable to 5 million litres per day); however, this plant is not operational yet as it is still newly developed.
Richardâs Bay has a desalination plant that was installed during the 2016/17 drought to provide the town with 10 million litres per day. It has been operating at an average rate of 6 million litres per day. The plant has had several problems, particularly cable theft, which has interrupted supply, and excessive pressure, which resulted in pipe bursts in the areas receiving water.
4. What desalination is in the pipeline for Cape Town?
Four of the seven augmentation projects that will bring new water online for Cape Town are desalination plants. They are based at the Waterfront, Cape Town harbour, Monwabisi and Strandfontein (the latter two on the False Bay coast). These are relatively small-scale operations. The City has been criticised for initially trying to bring on smaller and quicker plants to provide water during a Day Zero scenario as these are more expensive. At one stage we were going to bring in desalination barges. Barges have only worked successfully in more sheltered sea areas in the Red Sea and the Gulf. There is very little international capacity in this market at the moment, and this is currently not a viable option for Cape Town. Barges are also generally more expensive than land-based desalination.
5. So why arenât we doing more desalination in Cape Town?
For arid and drought-stricken coastal cities, desalination can be an important source of water which is completely independent of local rainfall. However, desalination remains the resource of last resort for most cities because it is the most expensive. Desalination takes longer to bring online than drilling the shallower boreholes in Atlantis and the Cape Flats. Desalination would also be more cost-effective at larger scales between 150 to 200 million litres per day would be the best economy of scale for Cape Town.
6. What other constraints are there?
The availability of electricity is also a potential issue. Concerns have been raised in the United States that electricity supplies in local grids are not able to accommodate new desalination plants built in response to the Californian drought. South Africa is not long out of an electricity crisis. A further energy crisis at the same time as a water shortage would place this source at risk. Some plants overseas are starting to operate with solar energy, and this could be an option for Cape Town in the long-term. At the moment most of our energy is generated using coal-fired power stations and this means our energy generation puts a lot of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere which is a cause of climate change ââŹâ which in turn would fuel future droughts.
9. How expensive is desalination compared to other water sources?
Globally desalination is between two to four times as expensive as most other sources depending on the relative cost of capital equipment (how much has to be imported etc), the cost of energy and the cost of labour to implement other water savings. By way of comparison the costs for Cape Town would be:
Raw surface water | between R1 and R4 per kilolitre
Alien clearing to release more water from our catchments | from R6 to R15 per kilolitre
New groundwater | around R15 per kilolitre
Reclaiming and re-using treated waste water | between R10 and R20 per kilolitre
Large-scale, permanent desalination | between R10 and R22 per kilolitre
Smaller, short-term desalination | R34 to R44 per kilolitre