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Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
211–220 of 241 posts
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
brine disposable seems like a made up problem to me. We're not going to raise the salt content of the world's oceans by pumping the salt back from whence it came. I understand we don't want to put the high salt discharge near sea life, but that is not a hard problem.
> We're not going to raise the salt content of the world's oceans by pumping the salt back from whence it came. Sorry, maybe dumb question but why not? We're taking out water and leaving behind salt
I meant the salinity content per liter of the world's oceans would rise an insignificant amount, especially since fresh water flows back to the sea for the most part. If someone can tell me otherwise, I'm ready to be educated.
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#213For those curious what the 385% refers to > the team’s demonstration device can achieve an overall efficiency of 385 percent in converting the energy of sunlight into the energy of water evaporation. Honestly I still don't know what that means, or how efficiency can be over 100%.
> Honestly I still don't know what that means, or how efficiency can be over 100%.
They explain it in their article[1]:
"the solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency, defined as the ratio of total vaporization enthalpy to total solar energy input, for most previous studies has been limited to below 100% as the vaporization enthalpy is lost to the ambient environment."
[1] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ee/c9ee0...
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#214How can we couple this with carbon sequestration?
Use byproducts (sodium, chloride, calcium, etc) as feed stock for useful compounds. eg Phosgene COCl2 is a valuable industrial product.
Create artificial salt water marshes, which are pretty good at carbon capture.
Everyone's trash is someone else's gold. People are clever. They can find good use for the salt.
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing to worry about. Its people alpha-testing the Copilot internet commenting plugin.
Can't wait for all our text input boxes on the web to be GPT-3-enabled, and then all comments on HN and Reddit and Twitter will be just people accepting the defaults, and it will end up just being GPT-3 talking to itself, and we can all go back to doing something productive.
Pretty sure FB has several instances of itself with all the users played by GPT-3 trained on the users’ previous activities so they can monte carlo various changes, like pre-A|B testing or estimating impact of various new ad types or congressional testimonies.
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why release the salt back into sea water? This is salt production alongside desalination.
We already have a massive oversupply of salt from existing desalination. The cost of table salt is basically all transportation at this point.
> The cost of table salt is basically all transportation at this point.
Using the salt on site would save the transport, though?
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
brine disposable seems like a made up problem to me. We're not going to raise the salt content of the world's oceans by pumping the salt back from whence it came. I understand we don't want to put the high salt discharge near sea life, but that is not a hard problem.
> We're not going to raise the salt content of the world's oceans by pumping the salt back from whence it came. Sorry, maybe dumb question but why not? We're taking out water and leaving behind salt
Partly we're taking out small amounts of water (compared to the size of oceans) - secondly some of the water is likely to come back via eg sewer treatment plants.
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#218As I understand desalination, a huge bottleneck besides cost is what to do with the brine. Why can't they build a gigantic pool/lake out in the desert and pump the brine there and let it dry into salt and other minerals. A 10 square mile pit/pool with a clay or other barrier to prevent it from sinking into the aquifers would allow for a massive amount of brine to be safely contained in one place wouldn't it?
brine disposable seems like a made up problem to me. We're not going to raise the salt content of the world's oceans by pumping the salt back from whence it came. I understand we don't want to put the high salt discharge near sea life, but that is not a hard problem.
Seriously, so many possible solutions.
You can sell it.
You can give it away for free.
You can turn it into something else and use it/sell it.
You can mix it with treated sewage water flowing into the ocean.
You can mix it with fresh water flowing into the ocean.
You can discharge it over a larger area.
It's not a "real" problem.
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're not going to raise the salt content of the world's oceans by pumping the salt back from whence it came. Sorry, maybe dumb question but why not? We're taking out water and leaving behind salt
I meant the salinity content per liter of the world's oceans would rise an insignificant amount, especially since fresh water flows back to the sea for the most part. If someone can tell me otherwise, I'm ready to be educated.
It takes a while to disperse. Meanwhile salinity in the region has gone up, say 2%. Apparently sea life is very sensitive to it.
I agree there are a number of solutions though. Adding to treated sewage is a good one.
Re: Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing to worry about. Its people alpha-testing the Copilot internet commenting plugin.
Can't wait for all our text input boxes on the web to be GPT-3-enabled, and then all comments on HN and Reddit and Twitter will be just people accepting the defaults, and it will end up just being GPT-3 talking to itself, and we can all go back to doing something productive.
Reminds me of a post here where it was some neural network chat/excuse generator. Just two people back and forthing about why they couldn’t meet up.
I lost it when one of the excuses was, 3 weeks later “oh, I can’t meet for lunch on July 29th, I have to go to my mother’s funeral”