you are fast on your feet!
watch out or somebody might offer you a good paying job in the government
isn’t San Diego “reusing/recycling” waste water already?
Toilet to tap (directly or indirectly through an environmental buffer, like injection into aquifers). I know it makes many people wince, but indirect/direct potable reuse is the same general idea as desalination, only cheaper and less polluting. It’s a better solution overall, though you can certainly use a mix of technologies to meet overall goals.
It’s certainly my country’s solution - that and wastewater reclamation. Desalinated seawater for drinking, greywater for farming. Something like 85% of all drinking water in Israel comes from desalination, and 90% of all wastewater is recycled and used in agriculture.
Of course, water usage has a lot more government supervision here than in the U.S. No golf courses, for instance.
I’m guessing it’s probably because humans don’t need all that much salt for consumption or industry purposes and the existing need is already more than met by all current salt-producing sources. So there probably is little to no use for the salt harvested from brine from desalination, although there must be many other valuable chemicals and minerals to be had.
This. We don’t need THAT much salt, and the ways we are getting it now are considerably cheaper.
There are. Bromine and lithium, for example. But those are more concentrated in inland salt lakes and ground water brines, so it doesn’t make sense to extract them from seawater.
Coincidentally, I watched a video about this a couple of days ago. Even NGT weighed in. Basically, the conclusion was cost. It’s cheaper to ship it in than desalinate. However, I gotta think that once times require it, technology will improve and it will be more practical. Like solar, maybe?
Would it be possible to set up large distillation stills? They already have vast solar farms.. The largest one being 14,000 acres.
@Alessan mentioned Israel relies heavily on desalinization. But in that case, there aren’t many available and secure sources within it’s borders, so the expense makes sense for them. For the US, we have many available sources of fresh water. If push came to shove, we’d figure out a way to tap them (politically, socially, and financially), and likely before desalinization would be considered.
I agree. Anyway, reclamation is much cheaper than desalination, and is better for the environment. If you don’t like the thought of drinking it, use it for agriculture like we do. In many cases, it’s actually better for plants than regular water.
But the first step is, of course, regulation. Not everything should be grown everywhere, and not everyone needs a lawn.
Depends where you are. California and the southwest, not so much.
I was on a cruise recently, and did a behind the scenes tour. They told us about their desalination process. Someone asked what they do with the salt. Apparently they mix it in with their treated grey water, and release it back to the ocean.
I heard a report on NPR today that one of the casualties of Israel cutting off power to the Gaza strip is they can’t run their desalination systems.
Interesting. Where does Israel usually put the salt?
While cost may be an issue, the fundamental technology is not. We can set up nuclear plants, if we think it’s worth it.
But that’s not the primary issue. The primary issue remains dealing with all the brine left over. For the vast majority of the US, it’s not worth dealing with the brine vs finding other sources of water, which may include reclaiming waste water, which would be simpler/cheaper than desalination in any event and better environmentally.
True, but most of that region, aside from immediately on the California coast, doesn’t have much salinated water, either. If you’re going to do something as silly as shipping in vast quantities of water to the middle of Arizona, might as well be fresh rather than salt.
If politicians can stop being assholes in the service of big industry, it’s possible. Here in Corpus Christi, we’re facing the worst water shortage that I can recall in my lifetime. Estimates for the worst case scenario are that we have about one year of water left in our primary sources of Lake Corpus Christi and the Choke Canyon reservoir. And yet the county government is still all on board with proceeding with Elon Musk’s planned lithium processing plant which is estimated to likely use several million gallons of water per day.
Musk's Massive Tesla Lithium Plant Hunts for Water in Drought-Hit Texas | Financial Post.
The city council and mayor are supposedly working on ideas for a desalination plant, but again costs seem to be a driving factor in their plans for that rather than environmental safety. They could build it in the Gulf of Mexico, but instead are planning to put it, including the brine, in Corpus Christi Bay. I’ve come to believe that this is due to the influence of big industry from the refinery owners and from Musk. But yet here we are, likely staring down having to eat a shit sandwich sometime in the next year or two due to a corrupt local government.
No golf courses at all? Or they just can’t be watered artificially?
Considering the climate here, those are one and the same. If we had enough rainfall for golf courses we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
(For the record: Israel has does have a golf course. Just the one though).
the brine-pipelines might become the “21st century chimneys”, as I see it …
… same mechanism …
OK, this is going to seem like a stupid question… but why cant we just put it back into the ocean?