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One solution to producing water is desalination. You can effectively get unlimited amount of water, but you pay for it in energy. A quick Google search finds that there's a desalination plant under construction in Carlsbad, California.
There's also the problem of what to do with the high salinity waste water that is generated from the process. Simply dumping it back into the ocean can cause environmental problems.
All of this reminds me of a trip I took about 10 years ago to Palm Desert. Even then I was stunned by opulence of their water use and the utter disregard for sustainability. It's a city built in the desert that regularly reaches 100+ degrees, and yet every house had a bright green grass with sprinklers running constantly. One of the main attractions was their huge amounts of golf courses, that were of course always k…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
MIT Technology Review wrote a great article on this: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalin...
That is a good summary. A friend of mine is looking at putting a passive desalinator on the ocean floor off the coast of Monterey. Basically its a pipe with the permeable membrane surrounding the submerged collector. The pipe carries fresh water to the surface and as you pump out fresh water, the pressure of the ocean at depths of up to 1000 meters pushes in more water through the membranes, desalinating it in the pr…
[1] http://hawaiideepseawater.com/source [2] http://oceanvodka.com/our-vodka/ingredients/
"Initial estimates are that when fully operational, the Utah NSA Data Center will use as much as 1.7 million gallons of water per day."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
MIT Technology Review wrote a great article on this: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalin...
That is a good summary. A friend of mine is looking at putting a passive desalinator on the ocean floor off the coast of Monterey. Basically its a pipe with the permeable membrane surrounding the submerged collector. The pipe carries fresh water to the surface and as you pump out fresh water, the pressure of the ocean at depths of up to 1000 meters pushes in more water through the membranes, desalinating it in the pr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do it, but it turns out the work to pump water up to 1400 psi in a pressure vessel before it goes through a reverse osmosis membrane is about the same as the work to pump desalinated water up from the bottom of the ocean at 1000 meters. There are different inefficiencies in each situation, but I'd assume maintaining equipment 1km below the sea would trump them all.
I think he really means you bail the water from the top rather then pump it, leaving an airgap at the top that the pressure from below gradually fills with more water through the membrane. But then again unless you bail all the water, that leaves only a small pressure differential, and if you bail it all, it gets less efficient as it fills back up and the pressure differential gradually reduces and lifting it from th…
Water waste is everywhere. In deserts we water golf courses. In cities we hose down sidewalks to reduce dust and dirt. A huge percentage of the food we produce that uses water to generate gets disposed of. Then there's this: "Initial estimates are that when fully operational, the Utah NSA Data Center will use as much as 1.7 million gallons of water per day."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a good summary. A friend of mine is looking at putting a passive desalinator on the ocean floor off the coast of Monterey. Basically its a pipe with the permeable membrane surrounding the submerged collector. The pipe carries fresh water to the surface and as you pump out fresh water, the pressure of the ocean at depths of up to 1000 meters pushes in more water through the membranes, desalinating it in the pr…
Sounds like the MaHaLo Hawaii Deep Sea Water project[1]. They use that water in Ocean Vodka interestingly enough[2], which is where I found out about it. On the tour they indicated this project seems to be working out quite well. [1] http://hawaiideepseawater.com/source [2] http://oceanvodka.com/our-vodka/ingredients/
All of this reminds me of a trip I took about 10 years ago to Palm Desert. Even then I was stunned by opulence of their water use and the utter disregard for sustainability. It's a city built in the desert that regularly reaches 100+ degrees, and yet every house had a bright green grass with sprinklers running constantly. One of the main attractions was their huge amounts of golf courses, that were of course always k…
Visible urban water usage like lawn watering is a small fraction of the water usage in California, and even if every lawn stopped getting watered it wouldn't come close to solving the issue.
Can they somehow transport sea water to inland? if there is a need for that I'm sure CA will have some startup working on that.