Water Department Works With UCLA On Desalination

By Harry Saltzgaver
Executive Editor

Long Beach’s Water Department will take advantage of the huge technical research capability at UCLA to speed the evaluation of seawater desalination using the “Long Beach method.”

The agreement means UCLA will conduct bench-scale membrane evaluations, theoretical model development, data modeling and optimization studies. The laboratory research work will use and complement data being gathered at Long Beach’s 300,000-gallon per day test facility and a companion Under Ocean Floor Intake and Discharge Demonstration System.

Long Beach has been working for the last decade to perfect a method to take salt and minerals from seawater to provide a new source of potable water. The city has patented a dual membrane method created by since retired Water Department Assistant General Manager Diem X. Vuong that is expected to be much cheaper than the current standard of reverse osmosis.

The $5.4 million desalination plant, next to the Haynes Power Plant on the border with Orange County, began operation a year ago. It runs side-by-side desalination tests with reverse osmosis and various configurations of the Long Beach dual membrane approach to find the most energy-efficient method.

“We think that this will be a win-win relationship,” Dr. Robert Cheng, assistant general manager for the Water Department, said in a press release. “It is one that allows Long Beach to make use of UCLA’s state-of-the-art academic research facilities to answer specific questions that we may not have the resources to address, while exposing UCLA’s students and staff to real-world applied research issues.”

In addition to the work on the desalination process, the Water Department is studying the potential for underground pipes to draw water from the ocean and return the mineral-saturated brine that remains after the process back to the ocean. The concept is that the ocean floor will act as a natural filter, lessening the environmental impact of both pumping water into the treatment plant and sending the remains back to mix with the ocean.

Studies are expected to take at least another year. Then the city must find the money — likely from the federal government and other governmental partners — to build a full-scale desalination plant. Officials have said it will be at least 2012 before that happens.

It costs up to $1,200 an acre-foot to desalinate water now. An acre-foot of water is about enough to supply a family of four for a year. Long Beach currently buys imported water from the Metropolitan Water District for about $500 an acre-foot, and well water produced locally is even less expensive.

The new desalination method could drop the price to between $700 and $750 an acre-foot — a price that could be competitive by the end of the decade.