Free Republic

Finding ways to create clean drinking water where there is none is a field of constant innovation. Desalination, the process of filtering seawater to make it fit for human use, is perhaps the most common and researchers around the globe are on a quest to bring cost-effective and portable desalination technology to rural areas where it is desperately needed. So it’s exciting news that researchers at Alexandria University in Egypt have developed a promising new method that can turn salt water into fresh water in just a few minutes. The new Egyptian method relies on salt-attracting membranes and vaporizing heat...

Jordan and Israel signed an agreement on 26 February to go ahead with a World Bank-sponsored project to build a desalination plant in the Gulf of Aqaba and a pipeline linking the Red Sea with the Dead Sea. The plant will be built in the southern Jordanian port of Aqaba on the Red Sea and will desalinate water to be shared by Israelis and Palestinians. The brine that is a by-product of the process will be sent north in a 180km pipeline to the Dead Sea. The project will cost around $900m (£584.5m, €803m). It will take nearly three years...

A controversial proposal to build what would be the largest desalination plant in the nation along the Huntington Beach coastline was approved early today after months of raucous debate. The Huntington Beach City Council voted 4 to 3 to approve permits for Poseidon Resources Corp. to build a $250-million desalination facility next to the AES power station on Pacific Coast Highway at the city's southern edge. The desalination plant would produce as much as 50 million gallons of fresh water daily by tapping ocean water already pumped into the power station to cool the huge electrical facility. The plant still...