Comment on Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water
orrk@lemmy.world 8 months agoyou know, if you build a large solar still, you just have to flush it every couple cycles to deal with the salt, and it can be as big as you can make a warehouse…
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 8 months ago
How do you know that you’re flushing out all the salts with each flush? Are you able to reach every part of the reservoir with the flush? Even if you can, what do the flow patterns look like – are there dead zones with no flow?
It really isn’t as simple as you describe, although I really wish that it was.
orrk@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So the fun part is, all of what you mentioned, doesn’t matter, because you don’t actually need to get every bit of salt out of the reservoir, so you just flush out a good deal of it with more salt water!
you read this paper and its complexities and assumed that the things mentioned are inherently important to the functioning of the system, but like the Tesla-trucks and acceleration, they really aren’t.
all you need for the system to work is liquid, as long as there is more osmotic pressure pulling the water away from the salt than the hydrogen bonds produce.
low tech, easy to scale, and already being done
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yes and no. I get what you’re saying. No wash is 100% efficient, nor does it have to be. It’s just going to set the number of runs the unit can do before it needs to go offline for more intensive cleaning. Short run times though lead to more expensive operation. What this work does is increase the run time by more efficiently removing salt.
Do you get what I mean? Long term salt buildup is going to cause problems, and the more slowly you can make that happen, the better.
orrk@lemmy.world 8 months ago
salt is not limestone