en.Wedoany.com Reported - On July 2, 2026, the national-level public testing platform for seawater desalination, built by the Tianjin Institute of Seawater Desalination and Comprehensive Utilization under the Ministry of Natural Resources of China, was officially put into operation in the Lingang area of Tianjin Port Free Trade Zone. Covering an area of over 2,000 square meters, the platform can fully simulate the operating conditions and water quality of seawater desalination plants, testing key performance indicators such as energy consumption, effluent water quality, and service life of equipment, and issuing authoritative test reports to guide engineering design and product iteration.
Currently, China's seawater desalination industry is in a period of rapid development. According to the "2025 China Seawater Utilization Report" released by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the scale of China's seawater desalination projects has reached 3.077 million tons per day, an increase of 221,000 tons per day compared to the previous year. China currently has 167 seawater desalination projects, including 68 projects with a capacity of 10,000 tons per day or above, with a total project scale of 2.85 million tons per day. The daily desalinated water output has exceeded 3 million tons, with annual capacity growth maintained at 10% to 15%.
Since 2023, with the domestic production of seawater desalination equipment, the price of desalination equipment has dropped by about 30% compared to imported products, making the industry's demand for a unified testing platform increasingly urgent. In response to this need, the Tianjin Institute of Seawater Desalination and Comprehensive Utilization under the Ministry of Natural Resources led the construction of this national-level public testing platform.
Established in 1984, the Tianjin Institute of Seawater Desalination and Comprehensive Utilization (referred to as the "Seawater Desalination Institute") is a national-level scientific research institution directly under the Ministry of Natural Resources, specializing in seawater desalination and comprehensive utilization technology. It has deep technical expertise in areas such as seawater desalination, direct seawater utilization, and chemical resource utilization from seawater. The institute has long undertaken major national science and technology projects in the field of seawater desalination and is a core force in China's technological innovation and industrialization of seawater desalination. The platform is located in the Lingang area of Tianjin Port Free Trade Zone, a key part of the Tianjin Lingang Seawater Desalination and Comprehensive Utilization Demonstration Base, which has a total investment of approximately 1.96 billion yuan and a total building area of about 200,000 square meters.
This platform is the largest in China, covering the entire chain of processes for seawater desalination pilot-scale and industrialization verification. It provides multi-scenario, long-cycle verification services ranging from thousand-ton to ten-thousand-ton levels, and can test and verify various products such as seawater desalination membrane materials, energy recovery devices, high-pressure pumps, pretreatment equipment, and chemicals. Since its completion and operation, the platform has successfully completed the first batch of testing and verification for domestically produced positive displacement rotor-type energy recovery devices.
The seawater desalination industry is one of China's key marine economy sectors. The launch of this national-level public testing platform will effectively address the lack of unified standards for testing seawater desalination equipment, providing authoritative technical support for the performance verification and quality improvement of domestically produced desalination equipment, and helping to promote the localization of desalination equipment and the high-quality development of the industry.
