"Innovative Water Solutions" by Andrew An

There are a lot of environmental issues about water right now, such as water shortage, contamination of natural water bodies, desertification, and rising sea level. Although all of these problems are very severe, water shortage is the problem that is affecting our daily life the most. Since water shortage is impacting our lives a lot nowadays, it is essential to have a practical solution to this problem. While there are a lot of research going on, seawater desalination and rainwater harvestment is in the spotlight these days. 

Seawater desalination is the technology of removing salt and other impurities from the sea water to make it clean fresh water. This technology is very important since 70% of our Earth is covered with sea water. If it is available to convert sea water into fresh water efficiently, there is no need to worry about the water shortage any more. Moreover, the salt collected in that process can also be used to make chemical products. However, the seawater desalination technology is not perfect right now. The biggest problem that should be solved is that too much energy is required. For most of the seawater desalination plants, the reverse osmosis technology is used. However, this process requires a lot of energy since high pressure is required. Since use of excess energy might lead to another environmental problem, the technology using less energy is required for this technology to be more pragmatic. Moreover, since large space is needed to build the desalination plant, it might result in environmental damage. 

Rainwater harvestment is just simply collecting the rain water to use it. It usually involves catching rain from rooftops or surfaces. Water harvested by this technology is processed and purified so that it can be used. One of the advantages of this technology is that it does not impact the natural water cycle. As a result, there is almost zero change of this technology altering the water cycle. However, there are a lot of parts to improve for it to be widely used in real life. The first problem is that the rainwater is not safe for drinking. Since it might contain some impurities, the usage of water collected is restricted. The greater problem is that it can’t collect large amounts of water. For most of the region, it is hard to collect large amounts of water. Moreover, the availability can be restricted temporarily. Therefore, although rainwater harvestment is good technology to use as a secondary source of water, it is dangerous to use it as a primary source of water, both due to the purity of water and availability. 

Although the technology to solve water shortage is developing rapidly these days, there is still more research and development required in this sector to tackle this problem. With the right combination of scientific development and community action, the future of water can still be sustainable.