Experts recommend desalinated water for Beijing

Technical difficulties may no longer be a barrier to using desalinated seawater in Beijing, experts said at a conference hosted by the China Association for Science and Technology on Tuesday.

Ruan Guoling, a general engineer at the Tianjin Institute of Seawater Desalination and Multipurpose Utilization, said that with Beijing's increasing demand for water, the city has tried to expand its supply channels and desalinated seawater could be an viable alternative in the future.

The use of desalinated seawater in civil pipe networks in China first started in 1999 in Shengsi county, an island located in the most northern part of the Zhoushan Archipelago, Zhejiang province.

"Through all these years of development, scientists managed to make desalinated water that could not only meet all drinking water national standards but also work with current pipe materials, even taking the water type into consideration," said Wang Shougen, vice-president of the Hangzhou Water Treatment Technology Development Center.

"Our next step is letting the people of Beijing know about desalinated seawater and accepting of it, with the help of local government," Wang said.