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Comment on Could wastewater plant simply heat up water past 500C to decompose all chemicals and output clean water?

Raising water temperature from 10 to 500 degrees requires about 500 calories/mm3. That’s 2 MJ/litre, meaning if you want to heat 1 liter/second you need 2 MW with perfect insulation, so a power plant of say 10 MW.

A post industrial world citizen could probably get by on 200 l/day (US averages about 300/day. That needs 2 kW/person/day.

Total global energy production is about 630 EJ which averages out at about 12 TW.

Meaning if the whole global energy production went to treat water in that way, we have enough clean water for about 6 million people.

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Redex68@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
How the hell do people use that much water? Are they including water consumption needed for the products we use or? Let’s say a flush is 8L and the average person flushes 5 times a day, that’s 40L. The average person needs about 2L of water a day. Let’s say an average shower is 100L. Cleaning dishes at worst is probably like 20L per person without a dishwasher. That’s like 160L of water per day and I feel like most of those were over-estimates. How did they get to that number?

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- jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  They eat meat.
  
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  - Redex68@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Yeah but it says “at home” and gives recommendations how you personally can reduce water consumption (like more efficient taps or showerheads), which makes me believe that it’s not your entire direct and indirect water consumption (which realistically isn’t even relevant for the argument since the water used for crops isn’t gonna be getting treated anyway)
    
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- Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Dishwashing is a significant underestimate here, and don’t forget hand-washing (before/after bathroom, food, cleaning…).
  
  Plus you missed outdoor and gardening, which would help explain why the Land of the ~~Free~~ Lawns uses more than anybody else.
  
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  - Redex68@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Ok yeah the second part makes sense, but for the first part I was calculating it based on hand washing, dishwashers would be way less since you have to split the usage per person in the household, which holds for hand washing as well. Idk for other people but when I’m alone I use the dishwasher probably every 3-4th day and for handwashing I’d say 20L is realistic, double it maybe but still isn’t that much.
    
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