Desalted seawater will be tunneled into Beijing

As one of the world's top 30 cities severely affected by a freshwater shortage, Beijing plans to introduce desalted seawater from Caofeidian, a southern isle in Tangshan of Hebei Province.

The processed seawater will be tunneled into Beijing to satisfy one third of the capital's demand for freshwater, China News Service reported on Tuesday.

So far, a number of factories, including the relocated Shougang (Capital Steel) Corp. and Beijing Enterprises Water Group Ltd. (BEWG), have developed the technology. Zhou Haiyan, senior executive with BEWG, said her factory is now able to extract 0.46 tons of freshwater from 1 ton of seawater.

"Now the desalted seawater will make up an indispensable part of our lives," Zhou said.

In 2011, the factory completed a research and evaluation regarding the feasibility to supply 1million tons of desalted seawater each day to Beijing in the future. Their ultimate goal is to quench Beijing's thirst by tripling their daily provision to 3 million tons, though their current capacity of 50,000 tons a day remains far from these previously set expectations.

In addition to BEWG, Shougang has also produced a daily capacity of 50,000 tons. Yang Chunzheng, deputy manager of Jingtang Steel, a branch of Shougang, said the project represents a good business model in the field of mass seawater processing.

According to Zhang Guibao, deputy district director of Caofeidian, the mass seawater desalting project is in process and the local government will reserve land for it.

According to Wei Houkai, deputy director of the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Caofeidian -- an area critical to the integrated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei -- is developing as fast as Shenzhen when the city was in its early stage of urbanization.