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New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

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Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#131

Post by redsocksfan45 »

numpad0 wrote: post #97
Joker_vD wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, and enriched uranium comes from the ground Uranium can also come from the ocean water (there is, apparently, quite a lot of it in there, relatively speaking). Japan experimented with the technology in the nineties, but it really was much cheaper to just mine it from the ground, so they abandoned it.

Japan is also barred from doing own enrichment, being a non-nuclear state. Though, there nevertheless is a dormant set of requisite facilities.

You're wrong. Japan does do their own enrichment, 150k SWUs at Rokkasho with plans to bring that up to 500k SWUs a year soon. If they chose to make.bombs instead of fuel, they could make dozens a year.

Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#132

Post by eff-nix »

ashdksnndck wrote: post #95
ceejayoz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brine is very easy to dispose of: you just pump it back to where it came from. Easy, but not necessarily good for the spot you're pumping concentrated salt back into.

If you use fat pipes that go a decent distance from shore, diluting your brine with ocean water, you’ll have a negligible impact on the ocean. The problem is if you dump lots of brine in shallow waters. Old designs did have that flaw, but it’s not that difficult to design around this constraint now that we know about it. IMO this is an issue where NIMBYs are using environmental concerns as a smokescreen to block new…

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Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#133

Post by wlesieutre »

threwrfaway wrote: post #126
wlesieutre wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With fresh water, we’ll get it from desalinization! Hey wait a second…

Sarcasm aside, your comment actually works: you can use the freshwater from desalination! Just wait for the saltwater to come back around in the sewer.

Globally about 70% of freshwater is used for agriculture so less than a third of it will come back around, if it's exclusively for residential/commercial use you might do better but overall not a strategy that balances out

Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#134

Post by xyzzyz »

asdff wrote: post #118
xyzzyz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but dumping crystalline salt is even worse to the spot you’re dumping it on.

It doesn't need to be crystalline salt. Just mix the brine with seawater at a really high ratio of sea water to brine then dump that out. 100:1 ratio should be fine I would guess. Quick search suggests seawater salinity variance is already like 10%-15% or so. Even better if you pipe it offshore where currents will take it and not somewhere that doesn't circulate.

Yes, that's my point: if you're next to the ocean, disposing of brine is extremely easy.

Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#136

Post by FartyMcFarter »

ashdksnndck wrote: post #95
ceejayoz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brine is very easy to dispose of: you just pump it back to where it came from. Easy, but not necessarily good for the spot you're pumping concentrated salt back into.

If you use fat pipes that go a decent distance from shore, diluting your brine with ocean water, you’ll have a negligible impact on the ocean. The problem is if you dump lots of brine in shallow waters. Old designs did have that flaw, but it’s not that difficult to design around this constraint now that we know about it. IMO this is an issue where NIMBYs are using environmental concerns as a smokescreen to block new…

Yeah. Worrying about salt in the sea is like worrying about oxygen in the air. Can too much oxygen in the air sometimes be a problem? Yeah, in some corner cases. Is it a major problem that we can't solve? Not at all.

Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#137

Post by pajko »

xyzzyz wrote: post #94
ceejayoz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brine is very easy to dispose of: you just pump it back to where it came from. Easy, but not necessarily good for the spot you're pumping concentrated salt back into.

Maybe, but dumping crystalline salt is even worse to the spot you’re dumping it on.

You could put it back into old salt mines.

Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#138

Post by kijin »

pajko wrote: post #137
xyzzyz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but dumping crystalline salt is even worse to the spot you’re dumping it on.

You could put it back into old salt mines.

Even better, just package it up and eat it instead of digging underground and creating more pollution.

It's not every day that industrial waste happens to be not only edible but also tasty. Too tasty, in fact. Salt is addictive.

Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#139

Post by ianthehenry »

jaggederest wrote: post #71
ceejayoz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brine doesn't necessarily behave the way you imagine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_pool

Blue Planet video of a brinicle, content warning for kind of horrifying death of sea creatures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAupJzH31tc

And a Blue Planet II video of a brine pool, stronger content warning for much more horrifying death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwuVpNYrKPY

Re: New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

#140

Post by fakedang »

gaiagraphia wrote: post #87
jrumbut wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've ever been to the beach, you can smell the salt air and rotting seaweed and hear the birds. It's all gonna get on the glass (from above and below), and eventually the salt left behind is going to build up. The salt left behind is very hard on any structure or machinery used to move it which makes repairing the large glass enclosure a pain. All this for a slow trickle of water is generally not worth it.

The Saudis were fucking around with the idea of solar domes at one point. Haven't heard anything about it for a while though (probably due to maths, lol). A shame, I've always been fascinated by Egypt and the empty expanses of nothingness. On long bus journeys around the country, the imagination can run wild. https://www.solarwaterplc.com/featured-news/whats-inside-thi...

The issue with that idea is very simple - creating those inlets into the desert would risk soil erosion - in the desert. If your objective was to desalinate water, you're much better off using conventional desalination (there's still way more room to work around here first, like better and sustainable membranes, etc.) and offsetting your emissions by locking carbon away in mangrove reserves, which are native to those desert coasts.
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