Comment on Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water

• Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Depending on the desalination method, you can also harvest lithium while your at it.

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• DrM@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Sounds so easy for you but what to do with the excess salt is the only real problem with desalination that we have for decades now. It’s not easy to solve.

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  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You’ve got a point, but I’m going with ‘It’d eat into our profits and no-one’s making us’.

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  • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s only the second part of the problem too. The first part is how do we stop the salt from building up inside the device?

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• topinambour_rex@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Eventually is an important word here. With the raise of temperature, the amount of vapor in the air raises too.

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• FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Increasing ocean salinity is a very bad idea.

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  • Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    At the end of its cycle, that water will end back in the ocean, were the salt went.

    In fact not putting the salt in the ocean and instead storing it as a solid on land would over time reduce the ocean salinity as the water would end back in the ocean (after use and via sewage systems/rivers) but not the salt.

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    • Khotetsu@lib.lgbt ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You’re correct, but so are they. In the long term and at a large scale, it balances out, but in the short term, there is a very real concern about local salinity levels wherever you’re reintroducing that salt to the ocean. Keeping up with the desalination plants will be a tricky business of logistics to avoid destroying the ecosystem around where you’re dumping that salt.

      Adding the salt into water leaving sewage systems before it returns to the ocean might be a good idea, as you could basically kill two birds with one stone: put the salt back in the ocean while also avoiding damaging the local ecosystem with the fresh water of the sewage system reducing local salinity levels. But I’m no engineer or water treatment specialist, so I dunno if that’s at all a real solution.

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      • havokdj@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You hit the nail in the head on that first part. Peoe don’t realize exactly how long the water cycle takes to recover to natural levels when human intervention is accounted for. This is something that we are talking centuries to make happen, and that’s assuming we go at a steady rate rather than desalinate like we are trying to suck the oceans dry.

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  • Ejh3k@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Increasing ocean salinity is a good idea. With all the ice caps melting, salinity is going further down. The salt makes the water denser, and that helps regulate temperatures. Also, the salinity differences between the poles and equator create a general current that cycles the water.

    Plus, removing the salt and eventually returning the water is bad for ocean life. Their bodies need the salt.

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    • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You’re removing salt and water. So you are increasing salinity when returning it to the ocean.

      This isn’t guesswork.

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      • Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The water too ends up back in the ocean at the end of its cycle (same as what happens with water evaporated from the ocean which ends up raining on land) after having been used.

        What that paper you linked looks into (and indeed it is important) are the local effects of constantly releasing the brine in an area, since it locally increases the salinity of the water.

        So yeah, it’s a valid problem, but not a “we can’t put the salt back in the ocean” (in fact we have do it, to otherwise over time the salinity of the ocean will decrease as the water gets returned to the ocean but in that scenario the salt would not) but rather a “we can’t just have some outlets discharging brine always in the same space” problem.

        It’s a “polution with brine water” problem rather than a “salinity of the ocean” one.

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      • LufyCZ@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The water does get back into the ocean sooner or later, at least most of the time, see - rivers

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  • Coreidan@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Someone doesn’t understand what zero sum means

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• Nudding@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hehe, adorable chunks…

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