East China's Shandong Province is working hard on methods to desalinate sea water to quench the province's burning thirst for the wet stuff. It now produces 57 per cent of the country's total output of desalinated water.

China is extracting 16,600 tons of freshwater a day from the sea, with 9,500 tons of it generated in Shandong Province, according to the State Oceanographic Bureau.

Shandong has more sea water desalination projects than any other province in China.

Sources with the Shandong Water Resources Department said that on Changdao Island the province has the country's first sea water desalination facility producing drinking water.

The city of Qingdao has installed equipment capable of producing 60 tons of high-quality purified water each day from ordinary sea water. The successful operation of the equipment indicates that Chinese scientists have developed one of the world's most advanced technologies for sea water desalination, using a low-temperature compressed vapour distillation system.

In the city of Rongcheng, a new desalination project launched last week is capable of processing 10,000 tons of sea water a day, ranking it in the top level of this technology worldwide.

Experts say that with more than 40 years of experience in the field, China has made impressive technical progress. The production cost for 1 ton of fresh water extracted from sea water has been reduced from 7 yuan (85 US cents) to 5 yuan (60 US cents) at present, making desalinated water more marketable than ever before.

In Yantai, a co-operative sea water desalination project that uses nuclear technologies developed by Shandong Province and Tsinghua University, is to go into operation by the end of the year. With a total investment of 1.6 billion yuan (US$193 million), the plant will produce 143,000 tons of pure water a day, making it the largest sea water desalination plant in the world. Production costs will drop to 3.7 yuan (45 US cents) per ton, near to the current tap water price in the city.

Desalination technology has greatly relieved water shortages in Shandong. Almost all of its most-advanced cities are located along its coastline. But most of these cities face serious water shortages, with per capita annual water resource of less than 200 cubic metres, much less than the international standard of 1000 cubic metres.

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