did you know...

• The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant is currently the largest operating seawater desalination plant in North America.
• There are 10,032 reverse osmosis (RO) membranes in the plant.  Their surface area is 85.2 acres or 64.5 football fields.  The facility sits on land one-tenth that size.
• If the plant’s RO membranes were unrolled and connected, they would stretch the 223 miles from Tampa to Tallahassee.
• The size of each RO membrane pore is about 0.001 microns or 1/100,000th the size of one human hair.
• The 1.4 billion gallons of warm water that typically flow through the Big Bend power plant’s cooling system daily could provide every New York City resident with three hot showers.
• The plant’s high pressure pumps push water through the membranes at up to 1,000 pounds per square inch (psi).  That’s the same pressure high-quality pressure washers use to clean concrete driveways.
• All the plant’s high pressure pumps have energy recovery units which help cut the plant's energy costs and boost horse power as much as 40 percent.
• The pipeline connecting the desalination facility with Tampa Bay Water’s facility site crosses the Alafia River.  This crossing spans more than one-half mile and is the longest horizontal directional drill involving a 36-inch fiberglass pipe in the country.