Other countries to have developed technologies to make salty sea water drinkable, include Israel, US and Dubai. They, however, use a different technology-reverse osmosis, which is much more expensive option. The indigenous technology will cost three paise per liter in the long run and its power consumption is 3.5 kw/hour. Compared to reverse osmosis which uses eight to 10 kw/ hour, it is a much cheaper option.

Under the process warm surface seawater is flash evaporated at low pressure and vapour is condensed with cold deep seawater. The water is transported to Chennai using water bags of special material that can hold and carry 2 lakh liters of fresh water. Since fresh water is lighter than the seawater, it floats and a small fishuing boat can tow the water bag to the shore.

Sibal said, NIOT managed to produce purest of pure water using the technology. The freshwater produced by NIOT has a TDS of less than 10 ppm. The accepted standard is 500 ppm whereas the BIS permits a ppm of 2000.In India, so far NIOT has indigenously designed, developed and demonstrated the desalination technology that can produce about one-lakh litre of fresh water from sea water per day. A one-lakh litre per day capacity LTTD plant was commissioned in May 2005 at Kavaratti, one of the Lakshadweep islands.