Imagine what the extraterrestrial anthropologists will say about humans someday...
Like, what a nice overlords they ended up to be?
Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#12Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#13The article isn't clear where the metals are coming from. It could be that the desalination process simply concentrates what's already in the seawater.
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#14> Saudi Arabia’s desalination plants produce about 31.5 million cubic meters of contaminated water each day. That volume of liquid, most of which is pumped back into the ocean, is equivalent to about 20 million barrels of oil a day, or, double the amount of crude it currently produces
I don't understand the math.
31.5e6 cubic meters * 1e3 liters/cubic meter = 31.5e9 liters
31.5e9 liters / 3.78 liters/gallon = 8333333333 gallons
8333333333 gallons / 42 gallons/barrel = 198412698 barrels
So it looks like this calculation is off by a factor of 10. Did I miss something?
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#15Unless they are adding chemicals to the water before desalination (which I don't see mentioned anywhere), that sounds like the 'brine' is just ~1.5x concentrated seawater, which will get diluted back again? What am I missing?
Even if it's just extra salty it's still a local problem. You can't just dump it all in the ocean because it would still kill everything. You'd need to dump it out slowly or over a much wider area for the concentration not to be harmful. It's like a polluted river killing everything where it dumps out even if the amount of pollution is inconsequential overall.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (not the best at math), but the ocean is massive. The entire amount of brine they mention (31.5 million cubic meters) fits in one 300m square cube. Even if you drop it in an enclosed 1km-wide area of seawater, it will barely increase concentration by 0.01%. It would take millenia for us to increase sea salinity by this method, and all that treated water is eventually coming back.
Even if you took the total daily water consumption of the entire human race - 150l per person * 7 billion, or 1^12 liters, and made it extra salty, it is dwarfed by the total of 1.26^21 [mostly sea]water on earth.
This would be harmless assuming we are not adding anything to the byproduct, which unfortunately seems to be the case according to the other comments.
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#16Unless they are adding chemicals to the water before desalination (which I don't see mentioned anywhere), that sounds like the 'brine' is just ~1.5x concentrated seawater, which will get diluted back again? What am I missing?
Even if it's just extra salty it's still a local problem. You can't just dump it all in the ocean because it would still kill everything. You'd need to dump it out slowly or over a much wider area for the concentration not to be harmful. It's like a polluted river killing everything where it dumps out even if the amount of pollution is inconsequential overall.
[deleted]
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#17Unless they are adding chemicals to the water before desalination (which I don't see mentioned anywhere), that sounds like the 'brine' is just ~1.5x concentrated seawater, which will get diluted back again? What am I missing?
Even if it's just extra salty it's still a local problem. You can't just dump it all in the ocean because it would still kill everything. You'd need to dump it out slowly or over a much wider area for the concentration not to be harmful. It's like a polluted river killing everything where it dumps out even if the amount of pollution is inconsequential overall.
How about dumping it into a shallow pit and letting the water evaporate, creating new salt flats.
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it's just extra salty it's still a local problem. You can't just dump it all in the ocean because it would still kill everything. You'd need to dump it out slowly or over a much wider area for the concentration not to be harmful. It's like a polluted river killing everything where it dumps out even if the amount of pollution is inconsequential overall.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (not the best at math), but the ocean is massive . The entire amount of brine they mention (31.5 million cubic meters) fits in one 300m square cube. Even if you drop it in an enclosed 1km-wide area of seawater, it will barely increase concentration by 0.01%. It would take millenia for us to increase sea salinity by this method, and all that treated water is eventually coming back. Even…
The concern is not ocean-level damage through the salt directly but in localized ecological system destruction. The mangrove forest encompases a tiny portion of the ocean overall but removing this forest affects a large portion of sealife. The creation of 'deadzones' through salinity will have knockoff effects elsewhere that cannot necessarily be predicted.
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (not the best at math), but the ocean is massive . The entire amount of brine they mention (31.5 million cubic meters) fits in one 300m square cube. Even if you drop it in an enclosed 1km-wide area of seawater, it will barely increase concentration by 0.01%. It would take millenia for us to increase sea salinity by this method, and all that treated water is eventually coming back. Even…
The concern is not ocean-level damage through the salt directly but in localized ecological system destruction. The mangrove forest encompases a tiny portion of the ocean overall but removing this forest affects a large portion of sealife. The creation of 'deadzones' through salinity will have knockoff effects elsewhere that cannot necessarily be predicted.
At worst these dead zones would be tiny. They could dilute the waste stream by dumping it into the local sewage system, but I don’t think that’s going to change much.
It’s on the order of building a mall parking lot. Sure bad for the local ecosystem, but we have vastly larger issues.
Re: Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (not the best at math), but the ocean is massive . The entire amount of brine they mention (31.5 million cubic meters) fits in one 300m square cube. Even if you drop it in an enclosed 1km-wide area of seawater, it will barely increase concentration by 0.01%. It would take millenia for us to increase sea salinity by this method, and all that treated water is eventually coming back. Even…
The concern is not ocean-level damage through the salt directly but in localized ecological system destruction. The mangrove forest encompases a tiny portion of the ocean overall but removing this forest affects a large portion of sealife. The creation of 'deadzones' through salinity will have knockoff effects elsewhere that cannot necessarily be predicted.
[deleted]