Reverse osmosis was developed at UCLA in the 1960s and has since come to dominate the desalination market, replacing thermal desalination as the preferred method

Desalination is the process of removing salts from water and has been practiced for years; it occurs naturally when the sun heats the ocean and fresh water evaporates and falls as rainfall

Water scarcity is a complex, difficult problem being affected by climate change, which introduces growing uncertainty about future water availability and supply

Desalination alone is not a comprehensive solution to the world's water problems, and where regions are water-rich, desalination does not make economic or practical sense

Israel provides a good example by investing in both seawater desalination and water efficiency measures, resulting in lower per-capita water use than California and many US communities, demonstrating the effectiveness of portfolio approaches

Ninety-six point five percent of Earth's water is found in oceans and is saturated with salt and undrinkable, while most freshwater is locked in glaciers or deep underground, with less than 1 percent available for human use

San Diego County has historically imported nearly all of its water from the Colorado River and Northern California due to its dry, arid climate

The desalinated water globally produced annually is approximately equal to half the volume of water passing through Niagara Falls each year

Water scarcity and water access issues are not limited to developing countries but are occurring in communities across the United States, including lead contamination issues in remote parts of Puerto Rico

Seventy-one percent of Earth's surface is covered in water, totaling 332.5 million cubic miles or 366 billion billion gallons, providing over 48 billion gallons per person on Earth

Brackish water desalination requires substantially less energy than seawater desalination because brackish water has lower salt content than ocean water, making less salt removal necessary

Desalination is a fundamentally tricky process because salt dissolves into charged particles that chemically interact with water, requiring energy or pressure to separate them

One out of three people do not have access to safe drinking water, and projections show that by 2050, more than half the global population will be living in water-stressed areas, affecting over four billion people

Thermal desalination is the oldest form of desalination, essentially boiling water and capturing the steam to produce freshwater

At the Carlsbad desalination plant, water agencies spend approximately twice as much for seawater desalination as they do on imported water from the Colorado River and Northern California

Weather is variable, but if you have a desalination plant, energy, and seawater available, you can reliably obtain clean water regardless of climate variability or drought conditions

When salt is mixed into water, it dissolves into charged particles that chemically interact with the water at a molecular level, making salt water a chemically new solution rather than simply water with floating salt grains

Desalination is one tool of many, and for maximum impact, it must be implemented alongside other water supply techniques

The two main types of desalination are thermal desalination (boiling water and capturing steam) and reverse osmosis (pressurizing water through a membrane)

Reverse osmosis does not use heat or boil water; instead, it pressurizes water to tremendous amounts and forces it through a membrane to separate it from salt despite the water's chemical preference to remain with the salt