You Can Drink Water from the Sea on This Island in Turkey: So How?

of Balıkesir This island in the Marmara district is one of the places frequented by many holidaymakers. But other than being a holiday destination, this island differentiates it from other islands It has a feature.

On Avşa Island until 2010 drinking water It was a big problem. Due to the rapid depletion of underground resources and insufficient drinking water Balıkesir Municipality, The island was built in 2010 with an investment of 10 million 568 thousand TL. water treatment plant founded. Thanks to this treatment plant purifying sea water can obtain drinking water.

Purified sea water flows not only from homes but also from hotel taps.

While purifying sea water and making it drinkable is being discussed, Balıkesir Municipality Been using this method for 10 years is implementing. While the population of the island is approximately 4 thousand, 120 thousand during the holiday season It turns out up to . This being the case, providing drinkable water becomes very difficult. That’s why Balıkesir Municipality built a treatment plant and island residents can use seawater as drinking water.

This facility draws water from the Marmara Sea every day. about 4 thousand cubic meters It can produce drinking water. Moreover, the lime content of this water is less than other mains water. Seeing that the people were satisfied with this, Balıkesir Municipality increased the capacity. 2 thousand more cubic meters plans to increase.

Marmara Islands Mayor Süleyman Aksoy states that the facility was opened mostly upon public demand. Of course in this tourism sector also has a big share.

The most curious issue is how sea water is purified.

Seawater taken from a depth of 15 meters at a distance of 465 meters from the shore is transmitted to the facility and stored in the tanks of the treatment facility. Then, first the raw water is passed through coarse and fine screens and the coarse dirt is removed. Sea water taken from tanks first through 10 mm sieves then passes through other 1 mm sieves. to the sand filter is being transferred.

Incoming water is treated with minerals applied to keep the minerals in the water. reverse osmosis method is processed at a rate of 50%. The resulting water is passed through dolomite filters and subjected to the remineralization process. In the last step chlorination process is applied and transferred to mains water.

However, 50% of the water obtained from this treatment process goes back to the sea.

Deputy Mayor of Marmara Islands Erhan Uzuner, He stated that the water taken from the sea passes through four stages in total, various minerals remain in it and half of the produced water is transferred back to the sea.

However, this purification process The cost is quite high. Many treatment plants cannot convert seawater into drinking water due to high costs. However, with the development of purification technologies This cost may decrease in the future.