own process. During 1964, we also acquired the rights to patents, know-how, personnel and research facilities on the Pacific Coast at Oxnard, Calif., of the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation, Inc. We also obtained by this acquisition the services of Drs. Manuel H. Gorin and Ludwig Rosenstein who have major inventions in the direct contact heat exchange field and other improvements in the freezing process as well as rights to patents developed by Esso Research Corp.

It is this combination of technology, people, and facilities which we have put together to continue development work and experimentation to further perfect a new process-freezing-on a broad scientific and engineering basis. Today we have a skilled group which is a nucleus to further broaden our capability. Although we have made much progress in a short time--compared to years available to older heat processes there yet remains much work to be done. Any program of this type is based on trial and error-what we learn today allows us to take another step forward tomorrow. Progress-scientific progress can be achieved only through continued developmental work on a meaningful scale by dedicated people bent on success. Sometimes progress has been painfully slow as we have isolated and solved the many mechanical and technical problems inherent in any developmental program of this type.

Much has been accomplished since the Office of Saline Water first began work in this field little more than a decade ago. The cost of producing fresh water by older distillation methods was as high as $4 per thousand gallons. Today, after 10 years of continued research work, the figure has been reduced to about $1.

Meanwhile, freezing and other new types of processes-which were little more than ideas 10 years ago-have made strides forward. According to studies and projections of the Office of Saline Water, the United Nations and various learned institutions, the freezing process has considerable promise as a method to produce fresh water from sea and brackish water. Certainly it has the advantage of requiring considerably less energy, in addition to those advantages previously outlined.

We estimate that only $18 million has been invested toward perfecting the freezing process-about $6 million has been sponsored by the US. Government and the balance by private industry and foreign governments. In terms of major development programs, this amount of money is relatively insignificant. Industry and governments have spent several hundred million dollars on development of and plants for distillation. Combined with the short period of time, we must conclude therefore that considerable progress has been made in developing freezing as a process for economically removing fresh water from substandard sources. Based on this minimal expenditure of time and moneys, it is reasonable to project significant incremental progress with additional investment.

In the freezing process, much has been learned so that work can go forward. There is still much to be learned. Many of the mechanical problems which are inherent in any new process have been solved. It has been demonstrated that our direct contact controlled crystallization freezing process can produce fresh water, and with further

experimentation we can heighten its economics and further perfect its operational characteristics.

Recently, at the 15,000-gallon-per-day pilot plant at Wrightsville Beach, N.C., sponsored by the Office of Saline Water, using our freezing process, pure ice particles as large as one-fourth inch in diameter were produced. This diameter was at least four times larger than contemplated-and demonstrates how major improvements are achieved through development.

Although experimental work on a form of separation-using a centrifuge has only recently begun, the process has been demonstrated using a wash separation column which has separated one-half ton of ice per hour per square foot from an ice brine slurry-more than ever previously accomplished in a wash column. This piece of apparatus was designed by the Office of Saline Water from experimental data resulting from one of their research contracts. The results demonstrate how large ice crystals can improve separation efficiency.

These are some of the things we have learned in our experimental, trial-and-error efforts in the pilot plant. We have developed and transferred this information to the larger 200,000-gallon-per-day pilot plant also located at Wrightsville Beach. In the future these concepts can provide the necessary and reliable engineering and economic data from which larger freezing plants may be designed, installed, and operated.

Although we have developed an operable freezing process based on one series of criteria, basic research in the new art of freezing remains necessary as in other processes. There are many ideas which, while sound in principle, are only experimental in nature. Engineering and pilot plant experience and analysis are necessary to provide data to decide whether or not to incorporate them into process design of larger plants. These programs are vital in the continued experimentation needed to speed development of freezing as an economic, fresh water producing technique.

Freezing also has a unique role to play in brackish and polluted water conversion in the salinity ranges of 9,000 to 20,000 p.p.m., as well as in plant sizes from 1 to 10 million gallons per day. For every plant contemplated in the future with a capacity of 100 million gallons per day, we estimate that there will be at least 100 plants of under 10 million gallons per day. Electrodialysis, although suitable for lower salinities, is too expensive in the salinity ranges of 9,000 to 20,000 p.p.m. And, because of the typical higher concentration of scaleforming compounds in brackish waters, heat or evaporation or distillation processes require expensive treatment to remove these scaling compounds. Freezing, because of low-operating temperatures, largely eliminates scale.

Further knowledge can be gained by operating pilot plants of both large and small sizes so that what is learned in small plants can be quickly transferred to a larger scale, or what cannot be done on a trial-and-error basis in large plants can be quickly and economically tested in small plants and transferred if proved correct.

In summary, we believe the following should be accomplished in the coming year to accelerate development of the promising freezing process and that adequate funds be allocated for this purpose:

1. Continued operation of the pilot plants of various sizes to perfect

and optimize known process technology and equipment design on an accelerated basis.

2. Programs to develop new equipment designs and process concepts should be accelerated.

3. Continue basic research and development studies to learn more about the physical mechanisms underlying freezing technology.

4. Undertake engineering and economic studies on large-scale freeze desalination plants.

Since this program does not involve design and installation of large plants requiring major equipment procurement during this fiscal year, the expenditures required are relatively small compared with the expected achievements. However, we believe that substantial funds should be provided during the coming fiscal years to achieve the development of a low-cost freezing desalination process.

We, who have invested so much of our own time, effort, money, and talent toward building a trained and skilled team and achieving a perfected freezing process, are confident that the President's vision of breakthroughs, and the Department of Interior's dedication and implementation of its program to make available economic pure water throughout the world can be achieved.

Thank you for the opportunity to present these views.

Senator ANDERSON. I appreciate your coming and the work your company is doing. This bears out what we have ben talking about. Somebody complains that flash distillation is the best way to do this and somebody else is attracted to the membrane system and maybe the freezing process will work. That is why I am hopeful the people who believe these things will test them and all come up with some process, maybe two or three that are useful and valuable to us.

I appreciate your appearing today.

Mr. PIKE. Thank you, sir.

Senator ANDERSON. Our next witness is Mr. Philip D. Bush, vice president of Kaiser Engineers.

Mr. Bush, I do not want to disturb you before we get started, but we have had four witnesses in a matter of 2 hours and we are going to go on for another hour and a half or possibly 2 hours. This is a rather long presentation to be given and the Chair is going to put the entire paper into the record and I wish you would highlight as much as you can of your statement.

STATEMENT OF PHILIP D. BUSH, VICE PRESIDENT, KAISER ENGINEERS, DIVISION OF THE KAISER INDUSTRIES CORP.

Mr. BUSH. Mr. Chairman, I had no intention of reading this report to you. I had summarized this and will present it in about 12 minutes. If you prefer to do it after lunch I will be agreeable. Senator ANDERSON. That would be a very helpful contribution on your part. We do not intend to break for lunch.

Mr. BUSH. And in most instances, Senator, my remarks are going to paraphrase the report and the report should be used only as a reference document for refreshing your memory on some of the things that I might say.

You will hear several times the dissertations in these 2 days of how nuclear research has reduced the cost of power and that the

Government has spent billions on this kind of research along with industry and you will also hear that desalted water used to cost $6 per thousand gallons and now costs less than $1 per thousand gallons. so that the logical thought process is that if the Government spends enough the cost of water must come down.

I think there is more to it than this. The cost of water, desalted water, must be cut significantly under where we are now and you have brought out the point that no one even discusses the cost of irrigation water from a desalting process, but I think that if one addresses himself to what industry has done over the years, mainly with its private funds in our basic, more prosaic industries, he would have the confidence that the cost of desalted water is going to come down and particularly with the benefits derived of a joint program of both Government and industry financing the developmental work and the building of large plants.

The report you have shows many of the examples over the last 30 or 40 years and particularly, those examples with which the firms I represent are quite familiar because they are in the same business.

The report shows cost indicators for aluminum, cement, gypsum, magnesium, power, and steel production. These cost reductions and manpower reductions are simply the result of technological change and equally important, the scaleup from very small plants.

For instance, the aluminum cells designed in 1942 used 32,000 amperes. Now, we are designing plants for 150,000 amperes and the unit aluminum production from such a reduction cell is almost in direct proportion. The aluminum industry as a whole, in 1949, required 14 man-hours per thousand pounds of product. Now it is less than half of this.

The steel plant as recently as 1957-and mind you this is a mature, a very mature industry-the steel plant with which I am familiar required 6.8 man-hours per thousand pounds. It is now down to less than 5 in just a short 8 years.

How does this come about, you will ask. It comes about because of certain developments such as the carbon refractories in the blast furnace; use of oxygen in open hearth, and new oxygen steel processes developed.

How does this relate to desalted water? These are all processes just like the desalination of water is a process and the incentive of private industry with the help of Government development can only bring these things about.

In the plant we have for winning magnesium from salt water, sea water on the Pacific coast, our through-put of that plant is increased from 2 billion gallons a year to 9 billion gallons per year. We are basically the same plant. The man-hours required for this has dropped from 5 man-hours per thousand pounds of product in 1949 to only one and a half. Large kilns, more rapid thickeners, larger thickeners-in other words, the power industry required 2 pounds of coal per kilowatt-hour in 1925. Another very, very mature industry, and yet, since that time, our most modern plants are under seventenths of 1 pound of coal per kilowatt-hour. The trend is down, but the important thing here is that these trends, financed mostly with private industry funds, have been slow as funds were made available.

The important thing here is that for desalted water we cannot stand the pace, even though by some peoples' estimate the pace might have been rapid in private industry.

This is a vital thing and it must be a team effort between Government and private industry. A similar case is atomic energy, electronics, and space. What could be more vital than water? There are those who will tell you leave it to them-we will build you these big plants. We are prepared to guarantee them, they will say, but when you analyze the guarantees if the prices are anywhere near what one considers to be a reasonable price, in most cases they are based upon an unreasonable set of assumptions such as very high plant factors, very, very low fixed charges, and other conditions which then come out to 60 or 70 cents per thousand gallons, maybe 40 cents. We have even heard the numbers of 30 and 35 cents per thousand gallons. Not even the unbridled enthusiasts are guaranteeing anything competitive right now for domestic water supplies throughout most of the water-short areas, and also no one even discusses irrigation where the cost must even be one-fourth of that for domestic usage.

I can well remember in my business 10 years ago, the one I am most familiar with—we had some enthusiasts who were talking about 7 mill power from nuclear energy. There were those who got up at our atomic industrial forum meeting, the American Nuclear Society meeting, and said 7 mill power from nuclear plants is here and now, but it will be 1968 before we get the first plant now in real life. After billions of dollars of research, we are now there and the plants come on the line in 1968.

Of course, there has been a moving target in that which has helped with competitive conditions. Now, if the foregoing remarks on the rate of progress are true, then why should we build any medium sized and large plants one might ask. Why should we not just stay with the small development work? Well, it is not that way or that easy because the examples that are cited in the normal, basic industry carry over into desalting of water also. One gets only so far with basic development work, but you must build the medium- and large-scale plants in order to accomplish what you are after.

The developments are obvious, but there is a synergistic effect which comes from building a large-scale plant and in most of our industrial work, not simply related to desalting, one gets these benefits when he builds the large plants. Also, it gives you the opportunities of comparing two or more alternates in a large plant because you can afford to put two differences into a plant and test them.

Recovering polluted water, in my opinion, is not the answer to this problem because, unfortunately, most of the cases where we have polluted water, there are reasonably ample water supplies.

It is in the water-short areas where there is no industry and no polluted water where we are most concerned about the future.

One further point: It is axiomatic when natural resources are being depleted that anv incremental use of that resource must come at a higher price. Whether it is fuel or copper or iron ore, the same thing is true. The depletion process begins and the increment required, particularly in this country, to keep pace with our increased standard of living and our exploding population must cost more and when it costs more on the average, the standard of living is lowered unless there is