Cheap Drinking Water

First, a caveat. I love technology stories and have been reading them for forty years. But, it seems the higher the gee whiz factor is in a technology story, the less likely it is that the 'promising' technology ever comes to pass. Still, the world has a growing water shortage and is probably going to have to turn more and more to desalination. Here's a 'promising' story from Technology Review:

A water desalination system using carbon nanotube-based membranes could significantly reduce the cost of purifying water from the ocean. The technology could potentially provide a solution to water shortages both in the United States, where populations are expected to soar in areas with few freshwater sources, and worldwide, where a lack of clean water is a major cause of disease.

The new membranes, developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), could reduce the cost of desalination by 75 percent, compared to reverse osmosis methods used today, the researchers say. The membranes, which sort molecules by size and with electrostatic forces, could also separate various gases, perhaps leading to economical ways to capture carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.

I can see a time coming when the cities of America's Pacific coast and even cities along the coast of Texas will be required to get most of their water from desalination so that cities in the interior of America's arid west can have more water from the Columbia, Colorado and Rio Grande watersheds.