China expands seawater utilization with 167 desalination projects in 2025

The Ministry of Natural Resources recently released the National Report on Seawater Utilization 2025, highlighting the nation's progressive expansion in seawater use.

Compiled by the ministry's department of marine strategic planning and economy, the report noted that China operated 167 seawater desalination projects across 10 coastal provincial-level regions, including Liaoning, Tianjin, Hebei, and Jiangsu, in 2025. These projects handled approximately 3.1 million metric tons of seawater daily, marking an increase of 221,000 tons per day compared to 2024.

The country's total consumption of seawater for industrial cooling reached 193.36 billion tons in 2025, reflecting a year-on-year rise of 5.02 billion tons. Seven regions, including Shandong, Zhejiang, and Guangdong provinces, each recorded an annual cooling seawater consumption of over 10 billion tons.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), significant achievements were made in seawater utilization, with steady progress in expanding project scale, developing specialized equipment, and improving policy and standard systems. In 2025, newly-built desalination projects in coastal industrial parks began delivering reliable water supplies to sectors like iron, steel, and metallurgy. Desalination facilities on water-scarce islands improved local living conditions and facilitated tourism businesses.

Major breakthroughs were achieved in technologies to extract lithium, uranium, and deuterium from seawater. Notably, kilogram-scale uranium products were successfully extracted from real marine environments using seawater uranium extraction technology.