That must be a REALLY big lake. Thought the Great Lakes held some kinda record for the most fresh water, Jill Will have to look in my atlas tonight. > At 08:38 PM 08/09/2000 -0500, you wrote: > >They do do it for large cities. When we lived in Saudi Arabia all of our water > >came from a large desal plant about 30 kilometers from where we lived. It > >produced about 10 million gallons a day from water from the Red Sea. It didn't > >use reverse osmosis though, that's only practical in small systems IIRC. The > >plant was built by Mitsubishi and utilized flash evaporation, ie superheated > >boilers. The steam was then condensed, cooled and put into the big tanks and > >then to the pipes to where it was needed. The salt and other minerals remained > >behind and were flushed back into the sea by the next load of water brought in > >through standard filters. Since the Red Sea is about 10 percent more > >saline than > >the other oceans and seas it didn't make much difference. Note: There are NO > >fresh water streams running into the Red Sea at all. > > > >Flash evaporation on that scale is expensive unless you own half the oil > >in the > >world. Many home filters run on reverse osmosis. > > > >George, still posting via the archives > > On the subject of water, a scientist-friend is going on a tour to Lake > Baikul in Siberia later this month. He says it contains 20 or 25% (I forget > which) of the fresh water on the planet. The more I think about that, the > more astonished I am. Margaret L, who wonders how long the straw would > have to be... > > >