Today we visited Desalicizodora Del Canal De Alicante, the largest desalinization plant in Spain. We met with Juan Carlos Gonzalez, the Director of Maintenance. We watched a video about the plant and the process of removing the salt out of seawater. This was followed by a tour of their facility.
Alicante lies next to the Mediterranean Sea. The scarcity of water became more apparent in this region of Spain in the 1990’s with the increase of population, tourism and modernization.
The desalinization plant cost $49 million and was built in 2003. This plant uses a reverse osmosis membrane process, which produces 50,000 cubic meters of usable water on a daily basis. Eighteen sea wells pump seawater to the plant for processing. The water is forced with an external pressure through a semi permeable membrane to extract the salt. In this process 45% of the sea water that is processed is usable drinking water. The remainder is reject water, which is of much greater salinity than the source water. Because of environmental regulations, the reject water is analyzed and mixed with seawater before returning to the sea.
The Desalinization Plant of Alicante is the beginning of a network of canals and water filtration systems that spans across the region of Alicante. Treated usable water from this plant is pumped 22 kilometers to Elche and into the Infraestructura Basica de los Canales del Tabilla. This network of canals spreads across the Province of Alicante.
Our next journey took us to Xixona also pronounced Jijona depending upon which dialect of Spanish you are using. Xixona is about an hour North of Alicante. Xixona was a significant almond-producing region prior to 1986. In 1986 a change in Spanish law made both ground water and surface water public domain and under the jurisdiction of the municipalities. When other sources of water became unavailable, the local municipalities drilled deep wells into the aquifers and diverted the water to the urban areas. This left the almond farmers with a very limited quantity of water. Now most of the almond orchards in this region are not producing and have been abandoned. These abandoned farms are now suffering from erosion and the region resembles a desert.
We completed the day with a tour of Antiu Xixona, a food-processing factory. Its specialty is Turron, a traditional Spanish Christmas candy that is made with almond, honey, and oranges.
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