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 the desert into an oasis ?

Not to mention other deserts in the world, just the arid region of northwest China is enough for our country's scientific researchers to have a headache. Friends who have studied geography know that most of China's sand control will plant some plants such as Populus euphratica, Haloxylon vulgaris, and firewood to fix water and 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 arable land . As we all know, deserts are all "sand", and sand is not like the soil of arable land, which can fix water and prevent sand.

On the contrary, sand cannot hold any water source at all, so scientists want to turn sand into cultivated land, are they framing us?

Even if the sand is turned into arable land, it is not necessarily suitable for planting crops. He just soiled the desertified land quality .

This method of scientists sounds a bit bizarre, but it is really practical. In terms of expansion, it is to use the sand on the surface of the desert, coupled with the special plant-based fiber bonding materials studied by scientists .

Northwest Desert

In this way, the sand can be the same as the natural soil, and some can also evolve into the soil of the cultivated land. The principle that scientists use 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?

In order to introduce seawater into the desert, a major precondition must be met, that is, the terrain cannot fluctuate too much . In fact, looking 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 topography 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 the actual geographical environment of China, the location of the desert is the northwest region of China, and the northwest region has a relatively high altitude.

As the saying goes, people go to high places, water flows to low places, and the terrain in the northwest is relatively high. Even if China is building a large South-to-North water transfer project, 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 freshwater resources . If we can irrigate deserts with seawater one day, 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 lead to salinization of the land , so scientists have to face a problem, how to desalinate seawater?

soil 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 has made the northwest region, which is not rich, even worse. In fact, it is not that our country has not considered desalination of sea water, but the cost of desalination is extremely high .

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

How Saudi Arabia solves the water shortage problem

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

This time we don't look to the northwest of our country, we look to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East , the legendary "oil-rich" country.

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

The people of Saudi Arabia do what they say they do. Since 1927, Saudi Arabia has built a seawater desalination system in their country's Jeddah city.

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

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

Saudi seawater desalination system

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

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.

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

However, according to Saudi Arabia's habits, we can understand this kind of tall device. After all, he has money, and he buys hundreds of millions of missiles from other countries. Do you still care about this little money?