Texas Funds Promising Groundwater Desalination Projects

With an eye on the future, the Texas Water Development Board has approved up to $800,000 in grants to implement two brackish groundwater desalination demonstration projects.

The Affordable Desalination Collaboration will receive up to $500,000 and the City of Seminole will receive up to $300,000 to purify brackish water.

With a total estimated project cost of $1.453 million, the Affordable Desalination Collaboration project will demonstrate the use of advanced energy recovery technology and develop and demonstrate optimized designs of brackish groundwater desalination processes.

The membership of this nonprofit organization includes companies, federal and state government agencies, and water districts, on a mission to demonstrate affordable, reliable and environmentally responsible desalination technologies

The City of Seminole project, estimated to cost $1.65 million, will include planning, designing, installing and operating a pilot-scale brackish groundwater desalination facility using source water from Dockum Aquifer.

Brackish groundwater has between 1,000 and 10,000 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids. By comparison, seawater averages 35,000 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids.

The demand for water is increasing across Texas, the board said.

The 2007 State Water Plan projects that by the year 2060, the population of the state will more than double and demand for water will increase by about 27 percent - about 4.6 million acre-feet per year. An acre-foot is the volume of one acre of surface area covered by water to a depth of one foot.

At the same time, existing water supplies will decrease by about 18 percent - about 3.3 million acre-feet, according to the 2007 State Water Plan.

As a result, by 2060, Texas is going to need an additional 8.8 million acre-feet of water if new supplies are not developed.

The regional water planning groups propose to meet this shortage by implementing about 4,500 water management strategies and projects.

One strategy that is gaining attention is desalination of brackish groundwater. Texas has an estimated 2.7 billion acre-feet of brackish groundwater.

In the 2002 State Water Plan, three regional water planning groups recommended brackish groundwater desalination for a total of about 96,000 acre-feet per year by the year 2050.

Five years later, in the 2007 State Water Plan, both the number of regions recommending the strategy and the projected volume of desalinated water had doubled to six regions and about 175,000 acre-feet per year.

Through a Request for Proposal process, the Texas Water Development Board invited proposals that would demonstrate desalination technology advances or promising strategies to increase the efficiency of water desalination.

The request encouraged proposals that would concentrate management processes and help to train operators for the desalination facilities.

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