It can use treated waste water, so it’s not that specialized.
Comment on Japanese Power Plant Turns Saltwater Into Electricity
csh83669@programming.dev 1 week ago
I sounds more like it makes electricity out of fresh water, destroying it in the process (turning it into saltwater through osmosis/dilution). Sure… if there is some crazy salty water you have, and want to turn it into “still salty, but maybe less so”, you can indeed gather a tiny little fraction of the power.
But given that fresh water is also a precious resource in many places, this seems relatively niche.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Redex68@lemmy.world 1 week ago
From what the article says, it’s actually a pretty cool way of improving desalination plants. They use the left over brine, from desalination, that has a very high concentration of salt, and use it as the high salt concentration side, with regular seawater being used on the other side. This both gives them free energy and reduces the side effects of pumping that extremely salty water into the sea.