Intake

Issues - Intake
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Seawater desalination plants require an intake system to provide a reliable supply of seawater to the facility. Designs for the intake are very specific to the location; possibly more so than any other aspect of a desalination plant. The costs of designing, modelling, and monitoring an intake may be as much as 20% of the capital cost of the entire facility. As such, it is possible that the feasibility and performance of a desalination plant may be determinate by intake issues.

Historically, environmental impacts associated with concentrate discharge at the outfall have been considered the most significant ecological hurdle when designing a new facility. However, marine life impingement and entrainment associated with intakes were noted by some research to be harder to quantify and may represent a more significant adverse environmental impact .