Potable drinking water should not be taken for granted since it is the key to sustainable human existence. It has therefore become the most sought after and prized iconic resource on planet Earth, especially since less than 3% of all water on Earth is directly potable. Approximately 98% of the 320 million cubic miles of water in the earth's crust is salty and useful neither for irrigation by present techniques nor for the majority of man's other needs. The hydrologic cycle provides many times the world's annual water needs, but fresh water supplies vary widely not only over the Earth's surface but also over time in a given region, and climate change pressures have exacerbated the sustainable water supply challenge. An obvious way to increase potable water availability is to recover freshwater through desalination of sea water or from the large underground stores of brackish water which are available in many arid regions of the world. Desalination methods are well documented in the literature; key among them are evaporation, membrane separation, crystallization, all of which are at various stages of commercial use or full scale development and refinement to increase their efficiency and reduce their cost and energy requirements. Other innovative alternatives to these conventional desalination processes are also being explored to broaden options and water sources available to produce potable water. A small consulting/publishing firm recently submitted and was granted two provisional patents addressing innovative processes for production of potable water. One patent was titled “A System and Process for Obtaining Water from Fossil Fuels. This patent involves a process that produces potable water from existing systems that combust fossil fuels with air. Water from a power generation system is condensed for potable water purposes. This paper addresses the second provisional patent process, the THEOGEO process, where potable water is produced from seawater or brackish water by evaporation employing geothermal energy and subsequent condensation. Int the THEOGEO process, seawater or brackish water feed is introduced to a deep shaft at the Earth’s surface where steam is subsequently generated at great depths due to high, underground temperatures. The steam output that results from this vaporization process passes upward through the annular region of the shaft opening and can be recovered at or above ground level in the liquid state by any of a host of conventional condensation processes. The seawater or brackish water flows downward by gravity to a depth where the Earth’s temperature exceeds the boiling point of water using the heat pipe principle. This paper will review the status of potable water availability and the looming water crisis and provide a detailed discussion of the THEOGEO process for improving future water availability.
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