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They say they turn the salt into useable products. Such as?
by geomark 11y ago
They say they turn the salt into useable products. Such as?
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoSalt is quite valuable if it can be refined. Pairing salt production with desalination is common.
- geomark 11y agoThis is agricultural runoff they are desalinating, right? I would've thought it is so full of other stuff that it would be too contaminated to extract salt. But I don't know anything about the refining process so maybe it is feasible to get very pure salt even in the presence of contaminants.
- fulafel 11y agohttp://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/salt/mcs-2015-salt.pdf http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/salt/mcs-20... says solar salt is $50/ton ($0.05/kg). I doubt that's even break-even price after transport for a small scale producer if that's how much the commodity broker will resell it at. It's maybe same or less than the price of sand?
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoSand is considered quite valuable also...where value is relative of course. India in particular has a big problem with illegal sand dredging.
- maxerickson 11y agoThis article adds a little bit of info about the solids: http://waterfx.co/blog/an-inside-look-at-the-aqua4-technology-that-will-power-hydrorevolution-q-and-a-with-dr-matthew-stuber/ http://waterfx.co/blog/an-inside-look-at-the-aqua4-technolog... What are the leftovers after the distillation process, and what specifically will happen to them at the HydroRevolution plant? The HydroRevolution plant is aiming to produce two products: water and solid salt. The water will be transferred to Panoche and the solid salt will be further processed by WaterFX and industrial partners into various downstream by-products that can be sold into the industrial and chemicals markets. Examples of these by-product materials are building components (gypsum), metals, selenium, and recovered fertilizers. I think if they were distilling seawater they would probably end up discharging brine.