With the development of science and technology, people can always make many impossible possibilities, and the development of genetically modified technology and big data is very fast.

The rapid development of science and technology has also made us pay more and more attention to the protection of the natural environment, such as how to turn a desert into an oasis ?

Not to mention other deserts in the world, just the arid area in Northwest China is enough to cause headaches for scientific researchers in our country. Friends who have studied geography know that most of the sand control in China will plant some vegetation such as Populus euphratica, Haloxylon, and firewood to fix water and prevent sand.

However , it is too far-fetched to rely on these sand-control vegetation to control land desertification . According to the measurements of scientists, we actually have a set of methods to improve the characteristics of land desertification.

Northwest Desert

To put it simply, it is to transform desert land into cultivated land . As we all know, deserts are all "sand". Unlike the soil in cultivated land, sand can hold water and prevent sand.

On the contrary, sand can't hold any water source at all, so scientists want to turn sand into arable land, are they framing us?

Even if the sand is turned into arable land, it is not necessarily suitable for growing crops. It just turns the quality of the sandy land into soil .

The scientists' method sounds a bit unbelievable, but it is really practical. To expand, it is to use the sand on the surface of the desert, coupled with the special plant-based fiber bonding material researched by the scientists .

northwest desert

In this way, the sand can be the same as the natural soil, and some can evolve into the soil of cultivated land. The principle used by scientists is the binding force between soil particles.

Simply put, soil is made up of thousands of soil particles, and there is a strong binding force between these soil particles, on the contrary sand does not.

Therefore, scientists have developed a special bonding material based on the characteristics of the soil, adding sand on the basis of the bonding material, so that the sand forms a binding force.

In this way, just like natural soil, it has the function of storing water, air and nutrients. However, some friends asked me, can't our country introduce seawater directly to irrigate the desert?

Can't sea water be introduced directly into the desert?

If seawater wants to be introduced into the desert, a major prerequisite must be met, that is, the terrain should not be too undulating . In fact, if you look at it with the naked eye, you may think that the ocean and the land are on the same level, but it is not. The actual terrain of the ocean is much lower than that of the land.

Let’s put it this way, once the sea water disappears, the plains we are now in are equivalent to being on Mount Everest, at this time not only is the altitude high, but the air is thin.

According to China's existing actual geographical environment, the desert is located in the northwest region of China, and the altitude in the northwest region is relatively high.

As the saying goes, people go to high places, water flows to low places, and the terrain in the northwest is higher. Even if China is building a major project of South-to-North water transfer, it will not be worth the loss.

Image source network

Then some netizens want to say that now that science and technology are so advanced, it is possible to irrigate desert oasis with seawater, but have you ever thought about how to deal with the salt in seawater?

As we all know, seawater is salty, and the water we use to irrigate deserts is all freshwater resources . If we really realize it one day and irrigate seawater on deserts, the land may suffer unprecedented damage.

Because seawater contains a substance called salt, once seawater is exposed to high temperature for a long time, it is easy to evaporate into water vapor.

When the seawater evaporates, the salt left over is placed on the soil, which can easily cause salinization of the land , so scientists have to face a problem, how to desalinize the seawater?

land salinization

If the seawater is not desalinated, the stains left by the seawater can not only cause the salinization of the land, but also damage the soil quality of the surrounding land, and even cause groundwater pollution in severe cases.

Such a messy operation made the Northwest region, which was not rich in the first place, worse again. In fact, it is not that our country has not considered desalination of seawater, but the cost of desalination is extremely high .

Coupled with the terrain of our country, it is a problem to introduce seawater to the northwest region, so is there really no country that can achieve seawater desalination technology?

How Saudi Arabia is tackling water scarcity

How does Saudi Arabia, where water is more expensive than oil, solve the problem of water shortage? Speaking of seawater desalination technology, this is really a big project that consumes manpower and material resources. Why do you say that?

This time, instead of focusing on the northwest region of our country, we turn our attention to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, a country that is said to be "extremely rich".

One of the most striking features of Saudi Arabia is that "water is more expensive than oil" , because there are many deserts in their country, but they are very close to the sea.

It seems that water resources are quite abundant, but it goes without saying that everyone knows that even if the seawater is inexhaustible, we cannot use it directly, so how does Saudi Arabia deal with this situation?

Saudi Arabia

According to the habits of the people of Saudi Arabia, it would be better to directly build a seawater desalination system. After all, oil exports have also made a lot of money.

The people of Saudi Arabia do what they say, and since 1927, Saudi Arabia has established a seawater desalination system in Jeddah, their country.

They desalinate seawater by using a technique called flash evaporation , which literally means evaporating seawater to dryness.

Then put the remaining salted crystals down, and finally put the water vapor of the seawater into a condenser, so the seawater is transformed into fresh water.

Saudi seawater desalination system

However, Saudi Arabia has added some minerals and low-salt groundwater to it, which has become the source of daily drinking water for the people of Saudi Arabia.

I have to say that the people of Saudi Arabia are really rich, because the materials for the construction of seawater desalination devices are very expensive. If this device is placed in China, our country may not have so much energy to manage it.

The seawater desalination plant system in Saudi Arabia uses expensive copper-nickel alloy materials , and then uses the circulation of seawater and the movement of fluids to improve the flash evaporation technology.

However, according to Saudi Arabia's habits, we can understand this kind of high-end device. After all, he is rich, and he buys missiles from other countries for hundreds of millions or hundreds of millions. Do you still care about such a small amount of money?