Seawater Greenhouse: A new approach to restorative agriculture
(pdf) By Charlie Paton, Managing Director of Seawater Greenhouse
Ltd., United Kingdom In arid and semi-arid areas such as around
the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea, the
scarcity of freshwater resources has led to increasing use of
desalination plants to produce water. However, all conventional
desalination techniques reject concentrated brine back into the
sea at roughly double the salinity of the intake. As a
consequence, the salinity in these semi-enclosed seas rises.
Increased salinity has an adverse effect on all marine life and
there are very few plants or fish that can survive a doubling of
salinity from 3.4% to 6%. In 2008 about 18.4 million m3/day was
discharged into the Arabian Gulf, 9.8 million m3/day into the
Mediterranean Sea, and 6.8 million m3/day into the Red Sea. That
is a total of 35 million tons/day and the volume is expected to
grow1. This effect is made worse by reduced inflow from rivers
such as the Euphr