President Kennedy called the salt water conversion project more important than putting a man in space. And for a good reason.

The world's population is increasing so fast that the supply of fresh water cannot keep up with its speed. In a September 1961 study of Struthers Wells Corporation by Troster, Singer & Co. it was stated, "Throughout the world there are enormous areas plagued with perpetual drought or near drought. Limitation of the amount of water available not only restricts agriculture and makes living conditions difficult, it also severely limits industrial development. This is so because water either directly or indirectly is a vital input factor in modern productive processes. In this country industry accounts for nearly 40 per cent of total domestic water consumption.

"The ultimate source of needed water is the ocean. Of total daily precipitation of 4,300 billion gallons, 3,000 billion gallons are lost through evaporation and transpiration of plants. Of the remaining 1,300 billion gallons, almost 90 per cent is returned to the oceans.

"It has been estimated that in the United States alone $20 billion will be spent in the next 15 years to construct new water facilities. A sizable proportion will, of necessity, be directed to salt water conversion."

That is why President Kennedy hailed the nations' first sea-water purification plant at Freeport as marking "an important stride towards the achievement of one of the oldest dreams of man—extracting fresh water from the seas."

The water coming from the Freeport plant is sufficient to supply the drinking water for a city. It will cost about $1 for each 1,000 gallons compared with 20¢ to 35¢ most communities pay for their water.

The Freeport plant uses a method known as "long-tube" burning of natural gas to heat salt water to steam. When the steam condenses back to water it drops the salt. This distillation method is the most conventional one of the five conversion methods to be tested at five pilot plants being built in the country to purify sea water and brackish water.

A new plant at Point Loma near San Diego will make use of multistate flash distillation with the possible application of nuclear-process steam reactors. "It consists," said the Times, "of spraying heated sea water into a chamber in which there is lower pressure and temperature. Part of the water 'flash' into fresh water vapor and the rest goes on to repeat the process in a subsequent state."

Other processes, according to the Times story, are (1) electro-dialysis (to be used by a Webster, South Dakota, plant), "by which the salt in water is ionized, or given an electric charge by removal or addition of electrons. It can then be removed from the water by special membranes"; (2) forced circulation vapor compression (to be used by a Roswell, New Mexico, plant); and (3) freezing process (to be used by a Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, plant).

It should pay for investors to seek companies which have a stake in sea water desaltation, especially those which are able to come up with a process to convert sea water into drinkable water at commercially competitive prices.

Among the most prominent in the field is Struthers Wells Corporation. Though an old-line maker o£ boilers, forgings and process equipment, Struthers has moved strongly into the atomic energy, missile field and desaltation o£ water program.

"The most exciting development by far," say Troster, Singer analysts, "is Struthers' newly devised and tested system for conversion o£ sea water into potable water." In their view, "this low desalting method could more than double the company's present volume of business within the foreseeable future."

Troster, Singer analysts termed the Struthers method a "breakthrough in the conversion of sea water into drinkable water at commercially competitive prices" They saw the key to interest in the Struthers freezing process in its method for controlled as opposed to flash freezing. Struthers Wells' unique patented process can produce large ice crystals, which simplifies the separation of ice from brine. Freezing, by the way, requires less energy than evaporation and eliminates the problems of scaling and corrosion caused by hot sea water in the distillation process.

The Struthers freezing process is still in the early experimental state, as are other competitive processes. The field is actually wide open for increasing competition. Other leaders in the field are Ionics and Fairbanks Whitney Corporation.

Unlike the distillation method, Ionics' process is said to be economically better suited for brackish water than for salt water. David Karr, president of Fairbanks Whitney, declared on March 29, 1961, that his firm and the state of Israel, working in a joint venture, had succeeded in designing and producing a desalting unit of commercial size that is capable of converting sea water into fresh water for human needs at a cost lower than ever before achieved.

Among the most recent entries in the water-desalting field are General Electric and North American Aviation.

General Electric entered the field with the development of what is described as a radical new distillation process for desalting sea water. The process has undergone more than 1,000 hours of tests, which seems to have proven its thorough feasibility. The new system is said to be considerably more compact than previously developed conversion facilities and to be competitive with the cheapest existing system.

One of the most surprising entrants in the water-desalting field is a maker of rocket engines, the Rocketdyne division of North American Aviation which operates a pilot plant on the basis of the acquired patents of Drs. Ludwig Rosenstein and Manuel Gorin, San Francisco inventors of a freezing process. Besides, in working with large liquid rockets, they acquired technical capability in the fields of fluid dynamics and heat transfer.

According to an estimate by Albert Shumsky, head of Rocket-dyne's desalting project, the cost of converting sea water could be reduced to 4O¢ per 1,000 gallons in a plant capable of handling 10,000,000 gallons a day.

Since the various competing desalting processes are still in their early stages of testing, it seems rather premature at this time to commit ourselves to any individual companies. What appears to be a sounder approach is suggested by Van Alystyne, Noel analysts who view the companies involved from two standpoints.

First are the large, well-diversified companies such as the above mentioned General Electric and American Machine & Foundry which represent good long-term investment values anyway, regardless of the ultimate fate of their position in saline water conversion. AMF has an electrodialysis process utilizing the company's AMFion-permeable membranes, which permit approaches that had never before been possible. The most successful application has been on brackish water, where cost have been brought down to 30¢-60¢ per 1,000 gallons.

Second are companies such as Ionics and Aqua Chem, where desalinization is an important part of corporate activities. Aqua Chem is primarily involved in various equipment used for desalting and purifying sea and brackish water and converting it to pure water. Its product line includes equipment for multistage flash evaporation and vapor compression distillation and also electrodialysis.

Incidentally, Aqua Chem's largest stockholder is Laurance S. Rockefeller, who was responsible for raising many small, unknown science firms to Wall Street heights. Naturally, even Mr. Rockefeller has had his share of sponsoring wrong companies.

Also deserving special mention is Struthers Wells' recently formed subsidiary called Struthers Scientific & International Corporation, 20 per cent of whose capital stock was offered to the public. The new company was set up to take over the parent firm's rights, patents, contracts and interests relating to the salt-to-fresh-water conversion program.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...