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A Chinese company and a university research team said Tuesday they will begin desalinating sea ice on a large scale to make freshwater for drinking and use in agriculture and industry, the Xinhua news agency reports.
With technological development, the cost of desalination is falling, which makes this kind of industrial-strength effort more feasible than it used to be. It helps that sea ice has much less salt than seawater: 0.4 to .0.8% versus 2.8 to 3.1%, according to the researchers, who are from Beijing Normal University.
Using newly developed equipment, including machinery to break and gather ice, Beijing Huahaideyuan Technology Co. says it expects annual output of 1 billion cubic meters of freshwater at 0.1% salinity by 2023.
Read more:
China to industrialize sea ice desalination – Xinhua
Desalinating ice: an answer to China’s water woes? – Water World
Study on sea-ice desalination technology – Academia.edu
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