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Martin Currie _ Aqueum gravatar image
RedR

While solar stills and Seawater Greenhouse are very interesting technologies, adoption to date is many orders of magnitude lower than the main desalination technologies of Reverse Osmosis (RO), Multi Stage Flash (MSF) and Multiple Effect Distilation (MED). MSF & MED are thermal processes & tend to only be feasible when combined with a power plant that produces steam to drive the desalination process. As such I would suggest that RO should probably be your first port of call.

RO only requires electrical energy, seawater, a small amount of chemicals and a means of disposal of the brine (most likely a well ecologically designed long sea outfall). So you can power it with any form of renewable energy available (and of course also with non-renewable sources if required). By all means compare RO with solar stills (which require a huge footprint) and Seawater Greenhouse (which is generally intended more for production of high value plants rather than potable water), but I would be surprised if RO didn't come out as the economic & technical winner in a feasibility study.

There are many different vendors of RO systems of all sizes - the 'Desalination Report 2.doc' is incorrect in this sense, you can get hand powered RO systems small enough to supply water for one person only, and the other end of the scale is unlimited, as they are modular. You should easily be able to find a number of vendors to give a competitive quote that covers your needs. You may want to start looking at vendors with a presence in your nearest larger neighbour.