Desalination video transcript

[Background music]

[Voiceover]: We may not have much rain in Perth but we do have lots of water around us. The question is, how can this never-ending resource be used to supplement our water supply? One way is through desalination.

Desalination removes salt and impurities from seawater and makes it suitable for drinking. As a sustainable and climate resilient water source, desalination will help ensure WA has enough drinking water as we head into the future.

Let's take a closer look at how it works.

First, the seawater goes through a pretreatment filter to remove the larger particles. Next, under very high pressure, it is forced through a fine membrane removing salts and impurities – this is called 'reverse osmosis'. At this stage, all the seawater concentrate is returned to the sea.

The water is then treated so that it’s ready to drink. Almost half of Perth’s water need is supplied by desalination.

And the cost of this process?

Providing a family of FOUR with desalinated water for one day uses around the same amount of energy as running an air conditioner for an hour.

Our two desalination plants – at Kwinana and Binningup – have the capacity to supply almost half of Perth’s water needs. That’s about 150 billion litres a year. All from a source that will never, ever run dry.

To find out more, visit our website at: watercorporation.com.au/wastewater