plant using a nuclear energy source. This combination plant shall be suitable for operation by the district by the year 1970. The study includes an analysis of combination plants with outputs of 50 to 150 million gallons of water per day and 150,000 to 750,000 kilowatts of electric power.

We believe the results of this study will make a significant contribution by determining, on a realistic engineering basis, the immediate prospects of desalted water as an added source of water supply for southern California. This study will furnish an opportunity to examine in detail the important practical aspects of combined operation, water storage, transmission and blending, and other aspects of a large actual system.

I would now like to comment on areas of general research and development in desalting technology wherein we feel that useful results obtained could make further advances in the art.

In the evaporation processes, it is probably accurate to speculate that favorable results in R. & D. would probably provide percentage reductions in cost desalinated water but probably not reduce cost by a large factor. Areas needing work include: (1) better definition of design parameters for orifice and baffle configuration, (2) better utilization of pressure differences, (3) better and less expensive condenser tubing materials, (4) improved pumps, (5) low-cost scale prevention and deaeration techniques for cool sea water.

For the single-purpose water-only evaporation plants where high-temperature operation with associated gains in thermal efficiency may be desirable, we need cheaper heating sources, improvements in process design, improved materials for the higher temperatures, and low-cost scale prevention techniques.

With regard to the nonevaporative processes and considering fruitful areas for development, it is noted as previously pointed out, that the electrodialysis process is generally preferred today in the brackish water areas for municipal water desalting. Reverse osmosis is still promising, but we need to reduce costs and improve membrane lifetimes.

It is our conviction that more attention should be devoted to ascertaining the requirements for water desalting-market surveys, if you will. Further, such work is needed to clarify the potential demand for water desalting facilities in the various size ranges and thus the emphasis in the development program. Those who have attempted such surveys will agree that this is a complex and difficult task due to the many factors involved. Nevertheless, it seems essential. It should be remarked that there are few areas where the costs have as little relationship to the price as in the case of water supplies. This is particularly frustrating to engineers who are accustomed to a close cost-price relationship. There are many reasons for this situation, most of them quite valid. However, the problem in trying to evaluate the potential of a new technology in such a situation on the basis of cost is not an easy one.

It must be noted also that there is a considerable tendency to consider average prices and costs when the incremental costs of adding to or even replacing existing water supply systems may be much higher than reflected in averages.

In short, the question of ascertaining the potential demand for desalted water as a function of price and quantity must be approached with a great deal of good sense and understanding of the many practical circumstances involved. It should also be recognized that additional water supplies are usually only a part of an overall situation involving water management, waste disposal and pollution control, power, etc. Effective application of water desalting technology must take these aspects into account.

Thus, the program must aim in one direction at the practical demonstration and application of the emerging technology in the real world and in the other at identifying and developing new processes which can lead to future significant cost reductions. Such a program should be carried out with full cooperation of the future users as well as of the manufacturers and engineer/constructors who will furnish the plants.

While the foregoing has necessarily been rather general. I believe it supports our conviction that additional development and application work as well as more research is needed in the field of saline water conversion, and that we are thus in support of the objectives of H.R. 7092. "A bill expand, extend, and accelerate the saline water conversion program conducted by the Secretary of the Interior, and for other purposes." The extension in time and authorized funds appears appropriate to us.

This completes my statement and I would be happy to answer any questions.

Mr. DAVIS. I am a vice president of Bechtel Corp. and in charge of the research and development work.

We have built over the years a good many small water desalting plants and we have during the past several years done a considerable amount of work for the Office of Saline Water and for other private plants and some in-house studies.

Rather than go into these in any detail I think I should point out probably the most significant project we are working on, which is being supported by the Office of Saline Water, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the metropolitan water district, is the study we are now making for the metropolitan water district.

I would like to state our position in general support of the subject legislation, H.R. 7092, and to perhaps make a few comments on the need in my mind for development work as well as for large-scale facilities.

There have been a number of comments here about the necessity of going ahead and actually constructing large-scale plants of the type that are now fairly well developed, and this is primarily the multistage flash.

There has been some thought here, I gathered, that if one is in a position to do this perhaps there is not a need to proceed, even with further research and development work on this type of process. I think I would be inclined to agree if someone said, "Is there much area for fundamental research in the multistage process?" I think there is really not a great deal of what you might call basic or fundamental research. There is, however, a great deal of applied development, applied engineering, and so on, which needs to go ahead both in connection with any project to build a large-scale multistage flash plant and also to go ahead in order to support later construction of even better plants.

One item that. I mentioned in the written testimony, which I think is a good example, is that in some of our studies we have concluded that the use of concrete chambers to house the multistage flash tubes and the water coolers would be considerably cheaper than steel.

One cannot say this makes a big difference in the overall cost. However, on a plant the size of the one we are considering for the metropolitan water district it would make a difference in cost of several million dollars.

One is not able to proceed today with the design of a plant based on the use of concrete, which is presumably a fairly well understood material, but there are many practical problems of how to protect the concrete against corrosion by salt water and salt water high temperatures, how to provide construction joints, concrete wall which does not leak too much to sustain the low pressures required, and things of this sort. There is a development program which needs to be done and things which need to be found out.

There are matters associated with the life of such a plant which need to be explored before anyone is in a position to built a plant which they can say confidently will last 25 or 30 years.

I think this is an example of one of the areas of activity that needs to be carried out on a development basis. You are trying to develop an engineering technique.

At the same time there are many variations even of the so-called multistage flash processes. The ones we are looking at today in con

nection with the so-called dual-purpose plants, such as will produce power and water, will operate at fairly low temperatures. On the other hand, for those situations, and there may be many of them, where it is not desirable to combine power and water production, then one has an incentive to go to the highest possible temperatures in the water plant, and one then is right up against materials problems which may limit the development of the multistage flash in that direction even though one may be able to go ahead with large-scale plants operating at lower temperatures.

I think these are the kinds of things that are basically involved in the need here for a program which proceeds with research and development and at the same time has in it, as Mr. Aspinall has pointed out, some of the actual design and construction experience of largescale plants as has been done in the atomic energy program.

I think there is one other aspect here, too, which again relates to the kinds of problems that have begun to become apparent in the Metropolitan Water District study, and that is it is very fine to look at these various plants on the basis of a theoretical study and to assume all of the conditions are ideal.

When one has the problem of finding a site for a plant, having to find out where to transmit the water, how to mix it with the other water, where to transmit the power, how to run the two systems jointly, it gets into the really practical problems, some of which were mentioned by Congressman Reinecke.

It optimizes the picture again and the picture begins to look different. New problems appear and new solutions have to be found. Nothing is unsolvable, and nothing is terribly difficult, but it is something that has to be done on a really practical engineering basis.

Our conclusion is that we feel an expanded program, with emphasis in some of these areas, such as in the area of reverse osmosis, com-, bined with a program of making engineering applications, is a sound one and it is needed in the saline water program.

I think with those few comments I would like to conclude and answer any questions you might have.

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Davis, do you have any present contracts with the Office of Saline Water?

Mr. DAVIS. We have one directly, and the one I mentioned, more or less indirectly, Metropolitan Water District.

Mr. ASPINALL. Can you guess at the amount of money you have received?

Mr. DAVIS. Exclusive of the MWD contract I would guess about $150,000, something on that order.

Mr. ASPINALL. The plant that you talked about in the statement, the nuclear generating station, is the one being constructed where? Mr. DAVIS. That is under construction. The sphere is complete. Equipment installation is proceeding.

Mr. ASPINALL. When do you expect to have that ready?

Mr. DAVIS. I have forgotten the exact date, but a little over a year from now.

Mr. ASPINALL. This will be a dual-purpose plant?

Mr. DAVIS. This will be primarily a powerplant. As I pointed out in the testimony, there is provision in the plant to make the water

necessary for the boiler, and so on, and this has been done with most of the powerplants on the Pacific coast.

Mr. ASPINALL. You favor at this time the additional authority that is being requested by the Office of Saline Water and for the program they have presented here?

Mr. DAVIS. This is certainly my position, sir.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Reinecke?

Mr. REINECKE. I have no questions.

Mr. ROGERS. Do you feel that in the distillation processes we have pretty well come to a position where we need to move on into production rather than continuing a great deal of research and development?

Mr. DAVIS. I think there is a need to get on with building some large-scale units of the sort that are now quite feasible from a technical point of view.

Mr. ROGERS. What size would that be?

Mr. DAVIS. Anywhere up to those we are studying now, a plant of up to 150 million gallons a day. This appears to be technically quite feasible and presents no large problems.

However, I would not like to see the fact that this can be done as any kind of a justification for dropping the associated development work which is needed to produce either better large plants or other types of large plants which, as I pointed out, might be high-temperature plants or in some way differ from those which can be built fairly readily today.

Mr. ROGERS. Couldn't that type of research be carried on in modules in connection with the size plant you are talking about being built. Mr. DAVIS. It could be carried out on modules. When one is building a very large plant as a production plant I do not think it is too good an idea to try to put into that plant experimental features which if they did not work might interfere with the operation of the plant.

You do not want to jeopardize the plant that may cost a couple hundred million dollars by putting an experimental feature in it. This is a matter of degree but I would not like to see it an experimental plant.

Mr. ROGERS. You feel more attention should be given to the reverse osmosis process!

Mr. DAVIS. This in my mind is an extremely interesting and straightforward way, aside from distillation, of accomplishing the desired result. Whether it can be economically a large scale is still a question. It is worth intensive effort.

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Davis.

The next witness will be Mr. R. W. Akerlow, manager, special projects division, and Mr. C. G. Rogers, project manager for the OSW Freeport demonstration plant, representing the Stearns-Roger Corp.

STATEMENT OF R. W. AKERLOW, MANAGER, SPECIAL PROJECTS DIVISION, STEARNS-ROGER CORP.

Mr. AKERLOW. I will brief this out.

Mr. ROGERS. Without objection this statement will be inserted in the record in full, Mr. Akerlow.

(The statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF R. W. AKERLOW, MANAGER, SPECIAL PROJECTS, STEARNS-ROGER Corp.

Stearns-Roger Corp. of Denver, Colo., is an engineering-construction firm of over 80 years' experience in serving both Government and industry. Our primary field is application engineering, which strives for optimum combinations of engineering know-how to accomplish the engineering tasks of our customers. We are currently operating the Freeport demonstration plant for the Office of Saline Water. In this capacity, we have been deeply involved in the technical and mechanical development of the multiple effect, falling film evaporative process for desalting sea water.

Stearns-Roger Corp. is pleased to present their views relating to points raised in the committee's letter to conduct a hearing relative to:

(1) The respective responsibilities of the Federal Government and private industry to accomplish research and development in recovery of fresh water from saline waters,

(2) The direction the program should take in the future.

At present there are several sea water demonstration programs, and many research efforts directed toward achieving the economic desalination of water. Pending a technology breakthrough, it is our opinion that the evaporative processes will continue to be the most widely applied in desalting plants. However, the limits of evaporative processes need to be extended to become more efficient, and the need exists for alternative processes which can be economically applied for brackish water situations. A real "breakthrough" will not be achieved easily. Therefore, the broad scope of the present program needs to be continued or even expanded if a breakthrough is to be found, and it will develop the "arsenal" of know-how to best approach each local situation as it develops.

The role of the Government is to give the necessary impetus to a program of research that private industry has been unable to provide because of the present economics of water. Water has such a low unit value that it falls into the category of "necessary to operate" instead of “salable product" as far as normal industry is concerned. Therefore, its availability has been a determining factor in the location of industrial facilities.

Industrial research on the private level has not been necessary, because the actual shortage areas are few in number in the United States at present. This present availability of water-rich locations is decreasing. Methods of providing water for the more arid regions where a brackish supply abounds could be a definite boon to industrial expansion, and thus develop areas of chronic economic depression, where water is in short supply.

The Government has been providing this emphasis through the Saline Water Act. Prior to 1961 desalting was accomplished on a laboratory or pliot-making scale, or in small marine evaporators. Potable water from desalting was expensive. The action of the Congress in establishing production-size development plants was instrumental in the rapid demonstration that the cost of desalting water could become attractive to industry as well as the individual consumer. The Freeport plant is an example of the progress which was made. The continuous testing of the results of research under controlled conditions, by an unbiased operator, has produced results. Materials, individual unit operations modules, and the overall process have been improved, resulting in an increasing ability to combine the right things into a lower cost plant, while maintaining or improving reliability and efficiency. Private industry could not at present justify the broad approach which is necessary to advance the state of the art. By supporting a continuing program of research and development, costs have continued to be lowered. This has resulted from improvements in

(a) Reliability-More production from more on stream time.

(b) Efficiency-Process improvements to decrease energy requirements. (c) Mechanical design-The simplification of equipment and decreased capital investment requirements for a given capacity.

It seems to us that the Government and industry both hold responsibility for continuing the present program. Industry is accepting the burden of private research and development in areas of specific types of equipment and processes. When a particular opportunity arises wherein byproduct recovery can be expected, we would suggest cooperative research or research cost sharing on the part of industry and Government.