China pushes into seawater distillation

N

newguy05

This used to be usa...remember the glory days of nasa? Fast forward to present, right below this china link i see usa lost tens of billions of $ in iraq out of the $40 billion *RAW CASH* we shipped over, the cash simply vanished with no money trail, 3 year investigation turned up nothing.

It's ironic this entire project in china also cost around $40 billion. Now you decide which is more beneficial for their respective country.

China is investing/stealing/copying whatever you want to call it, and continues to push innovation/advanced tech in their country at an insane pace creating sustainable jobs for its people and becoming market leaders in those new tech in the world, meanwhile we are moving backwards with all the political bullshit & infighting, bleeding dry all the reserve the previous generations builtup over the last 200+ years.

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TIANJIN, China — Towering over the Bohai Sea shoreline on this city’s outskirts, the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water.

There is but one wrinkle in the $4 billion plant: The desalted water costs twice as much to produce as it sells for. Nevertheless, the owner of the complex, a government-run conglomerate called S.D.I.C., is moving to quadruple the plant’s desalinating capacity, making it China’s largest.

“Someone has to lose money,” Guo Qigang, the plant’s general manager, said in a recent interview. “We’re a state-owned corporation, and it’s our social responsibility.” In some places, this would be economic lunacy. In China, it is economic strategy.

As it did with solar panels and wind turbines, the government has set its mind on becoming a force in yet another budding environment-related industry: supplying the world with fresh water.

China’s latest five-year plan for the sector is expected to order the establishment of a national desalination industry, according to Guo Yozhi, who heads the China Desalination Association. Institutes in at least six Chinese cities are researching developments in membranes, the technology at the core of the most sophisticated and cost-effective desalination techniques.

The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top-level state planning agency, is drafting plans to give preferential treatment to domestic companies that build desalting equipment or patent desalting technologies. There is talk of tax breaks and low-interest loans to encourage domestic production.

But some say slaking China’s thirst may be a beneficial sideline to larger aims. The global market for desalination technology will more than quadruple by 2020 to about $50 billion a year, the research firm SBI Energy predicted last month, and growing water shortages worldwide appear to ensure further growth.

Beyond that, the increasingly sophisticated membrane technologies that filter salt from seawater can be applied to sewage treatment, pollution control and a legion of other cutting-edge uses. Far outpaced now by foreign membrane producers, which command at least 85 percent of the market, China is set on developing its own advanced technologies.

Some experts say that is where the government’s interest mostly lies. “What this is about is developing China’s membrane industry, more than it is local use,” said Ms. Jensen, the Singapore analyst. “This is an export industry fundamentally, not one to make a green China.” Whatever the motivation, China is already racing toward meeting its targets.

Just as foreign companies rushed to China to secure a place in its budding wind-energy market, the list of foreign companies that have plunged into China’s desalination industry is long: Hyflux of Singapore, Toray of Japan, Befesa of Spain, Brack of Israel and ERI of the United States, among others.

And just as foreigners shifted solar-energy research and production to China, desalination companies are leaving their home bases as well. The Norwegian company Aqualyng is a partner with the Beijing city government on a desalination plant in Tangshan, a coastal city about 135 miles east of Beijing, and is studying moving its manufacturing facilities from Europe to China.

ERI, which is based in San Francisco and claims to have the desalination industry’s most advanced technology, is moving research facilities to China and is considering moving manufacturing as well at some later date.


“You can either fight them or join them, and our philosophy is that China likely is going to be the next big desalination market,” he added. “I would rather develop technology for China in China and take a more open approach than play the secrets game.”

full article: http://www.cnbc.com/id/45042111/China_Takes_a_Loss_to_Get_Ahead_in_the_Business_of_Fresh_Water
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woosh..another game over.
 
CLEAN water more important than nukes.

how easy chinese get up to date technology and build from there....


no doubt chinese innovation talent will excel here as well.

Whites long gone from the podium of innovation. No Teslas there.
 
China may be out competing us, they may be out investing us, they may be out infrastructuring us, but they can never beat us in a war.

Oh sure, we spend a lot on the military, but that's because we can't equip it with cheap imports from China.

If we didn't have to defend ourselves against China, we could buy missles from them at half price.

the little sonofabitches are driving us into bankruptcy
 
Quote from macroman:

no doubt chinese innovation talent will excel here as well.

Whites long gone from the podium of innovation. No Teslas there.
More...

Which world have you been living in during the past 50 years? Major innovation in technology DOES come from "whites". Look at almost any innovative capital equipment supplier, and you will find it originates either in Europe (mostly Germany and France) or the good ol' USA. Take LED technology - China has purchased hundreds of units of manufacturing equipment from the few European and US suppliers during the past 2 years. China is still the "factory" of the world, whether it becomes an innovator in its own right remains to be seen, but so far it's lacking in this respect.
 
Quote from Gubinec:

..... China is still the "factory" of the world, whether it becomes an innovator in its own right remains to be seen, but so far it's lacking in this respect.
More...

China might be the most innovated country in the world now. According to Thomson Reuters, China patent filings overtake US and Japan this year.


[/B]China patent filings could overtake US, Japan in 2011

(October 11, 2010) -- China is projected to lead in patent activity by 2011, according to a detailed intellectual property (IP) analysis published by the IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters. China's patents focus has continued to be digital computing, a trend started in the 1990s/2000s outsourcing boom to China, but increasingly these are Chinese companies, not multinational parent companies, filing, says Thomson Reuters.

The study, "Patented in China II: The Present and Future State of Innovation in China," tracks global patent activity as a barometer for innovation across dozens of metrics to provide a view into China’s innovation economy.

This second edition of the Thomson Reuters study suggests that patent filings in China will outpace the US and Japan in 2011, one year earlier than was forecast when the first edition of the study was published in 2008. The projected growth in Chinese patent activity is based on analysis of the total volume of first-patent filings in China, Europe, Japan, Korea and the U.S. China experienced an annual growth rate of 26.1% in total patent volume from 2003-2009, as compared to its closest rival, the U.S., with a 5.5% growth rate, but larger base number of patents. Also read: Ranking the nations on nanotech.......


[/B]
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/world/asia/china-takes-loss-to-get-ahead-in

China Takes a Loss to Get Ahead in the Business of Fresh Water
By MICHAEL WINES

TIANJIN, China — Towering over the Bohai Sea shoreline on this city’s outskirts, the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water.

There is but one wrinkle in the $4 billion plant: The desalted water costs twice as much to produce as it sells for. Nevertheless, the owner of the complex, a government-run conglomerate called S.D.I.C., is moving to quadruple the plant’s desalinating capacity, making it China’s largest.

“Someone has to lose money,” Guo Qigang, the plant’s general manager, said in a recent interview. “We’re a state-owned corporation, and it’s our social responsibility.”

In some places, this would be economic lunacy. In China, it is economic strategy.

As it did with solar panels and wind turbines, the government has set its mind on becoming a force in yet another budding environment-related industry: supplying the world with fresh water.

The Beijiang project, southeast of Beijing, will strengthen Chinese expertise in desalination, fine-tune the economics, help build an industrial base and, along the way, lessen a chronic water shortage in Tianjin. That money also leaks away like water — at least for now — is not a prime concern.

“The policy drivers are more important than the economic drivers,” said Olivia Jensen, an expert on Chinese water policy and a director at Infrastructure Economics, a Singapore-based consultancy. “If the central government says desalination is going to be a focus area and money should go into desalination technology, then it will.”

The government has, and it is. At the government’s order, China is rapidly becoming one of the world’s biggest growth markets for desalted water. The latest goal is to quadruple production by 2020, from the current 680,000 cubic meters, or 180 million gallons, a day to as many as three million cubic meters, about 800 million gallons, equivalent to nearly a dozen more 200,000-ton-a-day plants like the one being expanded in Beijiang.

China’s latest five-year plan for the sector is expected to order the establishment of a national desalination industry, according to Guo Yozhi, who heads the China Desalination Association. Institutes in at least six Chinese cities are researching developments in membranes, the technology at the core of the most sophisticated and cost-effective desalination techniques.

The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top-level state planning agency, is drafting plans to give preferential treatment to domestic companies that build desalting equipment or patent desalting technologies. There is talk of tax breaks and low-interest loans to encourage domestic production.

In an interview, Mr. Guo called the government role in desalination “symbolic,” saying that direct government investment in seawater projects does not exceed 10 percent of their cost. By comparison, he said, big water ventures like the massive South-North Water Diversion Project, which will divert water from the Yangtze River in the south to the thirsty north, are completely government-financed.

Still, the government’s plans could mean an investment of as much as 200 billion renminbi, or about $31 billion, by state-owned companies, government agencies and private partners.

Beijiang’s desalination complex, built by S.D.I.C. at the behest of the Development and Reform Commission as a concept project, was almost wholly made in Israel, shipped to Tianjin and bolted together. Nationally, less than 60 percent of desalination equipment and technology is domestic.

China’s goal is to raise that to 90 percent by 2020, said Jennie Peng, an analyst and water industry specialist at the Beijing office of Frost & Sullivan, a consulting company based in San Antonio.

There are plenty of reasons for China to want a homegrown desalination industry, not the least of which is homegrown fresh water. Demand for water here is expected to grow 63 percent by 2030 — gallon for gallon, more than anywhere else on earth, according to the Asia Water Project, a business information organization.

Northern China has long been short of water, and fast-expanding cities like Beijing and Tianjin already have turned to extensive recycling and conservation programs to meet the need.

In Tianjin, deemed a model city for water conservation, 90 percent of water used in industry is recycled; 60 percent of farm irrigation systems use water-saving technologies; 148 miles of water-recycling pipes snake beneath the city. Apartments in one 10-square-mile area of town feature two taps, one for drinking water and one for recycled water suitable for other uses.

The Beijiang plant, one of two, supplies an expanding suburb with 10,000 tons of desalted water daily, with plans to someday pump 180,000 tons. A second 100,000-ton facility supplies a vast ethylene production plant outside of town.

The Beijiang plant has faced some hiccups. The mineral-free distilled water scrubs rust from city pipes en route to taps, turning the water brown. Some residents are suspicious of the water, saying its purity means it lacks nutrients. The plant is addressing both complaints by adding minerals to the water.

But some say slaking China’s thirst may be a beneficial sideline to larger aims. The global market for desalination technology will more than quadruple by 2020 to about $50 billion a year, the research firm SBI Energy predicted last month, and growing water shortages worldwide appear to ensure further growth.

Beyond that, the increasingly sophisticated membrane technologies that filter salt from seawater can be applied to sewage treatment, pollution control and a legion of other cutting-edge uses. Far outpaced now by foreign membrane producers, which command at least 85 percent of the market, China is set on developing its own advanced technologies.

Some experts say that is where the government’s interest mostly lies. “What this is about is developing China’s membrane industry, more than it is local use,” said Ms. Jensen, the Singapore analyst. “This is an export industry fundamentally, not one to make a green China.”

Whatever the motivation, China is already racing toward meeting its targets.

Just as foreign companies rushed to China to secure a place in its budding wind-energy market, the list of foreign companies that have plunged into China’s desalination industry is long: Hyflux of Singapore, Toray of Japan, Befesa of Spain, Brack of Israel and ERI of the United States, among others.

And just as foreigners shifted solar-energy research and production to China, desalination companies are leaving their home bases as well. The Norwegian company Aqualyng is a partner with the Beijing city government on a desalination plant in Tangshan, a coastal city about 135 miles east of Beijing, and is studying moving its manufacturing facilities from Europe to China.

ERI, which is based in San Francisco and claims to have the desalination industry’s most advanced technology, is moving research facilities to China and is considering moving manufacturing as well at some later date.

Most of the foreign companies have partnered with state-owned corporations, for help in securing business and for political protection in a country where the rule of law and protection of intellectual property are in a state of flux. And although some foreign investors in technology-laden projects like wind energy and high-speed rail later claimed their Chinese partners appropriated their technologies, the heads of ERI and Aqualyng say they can become researchers and manufacturers in China without losing control of their products.

The chairman of Aqualyng’s board, Bernt Osthus, said in an interview that the company’s partnership with the Beijing government had been “close to an ideal partner,” with the Norwegians controlling the technology and the Chinese providing money and local know-how.

He added, however, that the company was considering a joint research venture with a Chinese partner.

“By reducing our ownership in our equipment and taking on a state-owned Chinese partner and moving production from Europe to China, the technology effectively becomes Chinese,” he said. “I’m still the owner. I’m still owning my piece of the pie. I’m just increasing the size of the pie.”

And a big pie it is.

“There are large-scale desalination projects centralized all up and down the east coast of China,” ERI’s chief executive officer, Thomas S. Rooney Jr., said in an interview. “Our company has the most advanced technology in the entire desalination industry. And one of the beautiful things about China is that they like to adopt the most advanced technologies.”

“You can either fight them or join them, and our philosophy is that China likely is going to be the next big desalination market,” he added. “I would rather develop technology for China in China and take a more open approach than play the secrets game.”
 
Here comes the IPO train. This will give the market something to occupy itself with. Smart move on Chinas part. They can expand and maintain the population even faster. Having the technology, manufacturing and deployment in "house" is smart because they be operational with minimal profit loss. Fresh water processing will set them up to gain a stronger foothold in Africa.

Welcome to Planet Misery,

Akuma

Buy gold.
 
Quote from AKUMATOTENSHI:

Here comes the IPO train. This will give the market something to occupy itself with. Smart move on Chinas part. They can expand and maintain the population even faster. Having the technology, manufacturing and deployment in "house" is smart because they be operational with minimal profit loss. Fresh water processing will set them up to gain a stronger foothold in Africa.

Welcome to Planet Misery,

Akuma

Buy gold.
More...
no kidding, they have already made big moves in the land grab in Africa for farm land which they desparately need. It's a natural for them to build a strong trading partnership with Africa.
 
no matter how poor Africa is, China can export to them things they think they need and can afford in exchange for literally peanuts.

A shipload of shit from China to Africa in exchange for a shipload of peanuts back to China. And a shipload of peanuts can grease a lot of palms in China.
 
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